When to book flights for June 2020?

[sbell1]

We will be flying from Washington DC area to Anchorage, then Vancouver back to Washington in June 2020. Some flights are out now but are extremely expensive. I am hoping they will be going down in price at some point. When would be an optimal time for booking?

[martincath]

Totally not seriously - February 29th is always the best day to buy flights, except in leap years 😉

 

Still not very seriously - anyone who actually has the knowledge you seek is probably already being stalked by assassins paid by the airlines so they can maintain their margins

 

Actually seriously - there's a grand total of zero people who can tell you the best time to book any given flight.

 

You can certainly avoid buying at the most expensive times though when you have time to plan - asking 'Will flights get cheaper than right now?' is much easier than 'When will they be cheapest?'

 

Google historical pricing for the routes, and unless your current options are priced right at the bottom of the range then yes, flights will almost certainly be cheaper at some point... but there's nobody who can tell you exactly when that will be. Some carriers tend to have sales at relatively consistent times of year (e.g. Alaska usually offers deals about the same time that the cheques for AK residents are sent out, as knowing that one of your key passenger groups have all come into money at the same time is too good an opportunity to miss...) but if those sales were ALWAYS the cheapest time to buy flights with them they wouldn't sell a single flight any other time of year when pax can plan ahead!

 

So signing up for alerts on your route is the sensible way to realistically improve your chances of getting a cheaper flight - whenever we have an event planned months away that's what we do. Have I ever scored the absolute cheapest price that could possibly be found on the route? I have no idea, as I cancel the alerts as soon as I find a price that looks good to me and I book the flights - finding out later that I could have saved another chunk of change would just p*ss me off, so I don't look!

 

So set alerts, wait for a sale, and if the price looks good enough either book it or accept the risk of hoping for an even better sale later; lather, rinse, repeat as desired.

[AngelDisney]

I have used the Hopper App to track flights. It sends notifications and suggests pattern of fares. I use it as a guideline and monitor prices daily. For some airlines, it’s best to book when the flights first open up but not so for other airlines. It really depends on the airlines and routes. I am flying to Copenhagen in August 2020. I have looked up the airfare for flights in August this year to see how high it can go to help decide what airfare range I should aim for.

 

Have fun planning!

 

[LoriPhil]

We typically book early for flights, though will monitor prices on my preferred route for a few days to get an idea of pricing, as they can bounce around a bit over the weeks.  Thursday I booked our flight to Vancouver for May 15, 2020.