When Should I Buy Airline Tickets?

[pteague]

Hi all,

We are taking the Tahitian cruise on the Wind Spirit on 19 June. Does anyone have advice on when we should book airfare? Prices seem to have jumped since I checked them a couple of weeks ago. I thought they might actually drop since I think of June as low season in Tahiti....I may be mistaken about that.

[6rugrats]

You should have booked this a long time ago to get the best price. Flights to Tahiti are very limited and PPT is serviced by only a few airlines from the US. Major carriers are AF and Air Tahiti. There is service one day a week on Hawaiian Air that connects through HNL. Sometimes you can find an Air New Zealand flight that connects in AKL, but this is a long trip.

 

You may pull up flights that appear to be on AA, Qantas or DL, but these are codeshares and the operating carrier will be AF or Air Tahiti.

 

Limited availability = high price.

 

I don't know where you live, but flights to Tahiti leave out of LAX or SFO, so you'll have to pay to get there. You will probably pay about $1700 RT out of Los Angeles. There is no reason for prices to go down. Prices have "jumped" because the lower fare buckets are selling out. As the lower fare buckets sell out, only the higher priced fare buckets will be available.

 

There really is no "low" season in Tahiti. Lots of honeymooners in June. Buy now.

Edited March 14, 2015 by 6rugrats

[pteague]

Thanks, 6rugrats. Everything you said makes perfect sense, but hadn't occurred to me. I made our reservations yesterday! We're flying from the East Coast and the tickets were about 2100.00 each. On the bright side, we snagged emergency row seats on the LA to PPT leg (and coming back). :)

[6rugrats]

You're welcome. That's not a bad price at all, and you will be glad to have the exit row seats. Though, we flew LAX-PPT on AF and the flight was so empty, we were all able to get our own row of seats.