Buy Ticket now or wait for possible better deal later?

[southtexaspop]

Booked on NCL Jade, April 11, 2008 - 12 nt. Mediterranean, Istanbul to Athens. Am doing my own air and have a question. Is it better to go with air prices available now (9 months ahead) or wait for a while to see if prices improve? Have heard/been suggested to me to wait till Fall to see if prices come down then, but I'm a little worried that prices might get worse instead of better, desired seats might disappear, etc. While I'm somewhat ok with the prices now($1100+-, San Antonio to Istanbul, Athens to San Antonio), I have nothing to compare that with to know how good or bad they are except NCL wanted about $400 more.

Any thoughts or experiences would be appreciated.

 

Joe

[judie43]

Hi Joe,from my experience it is a crap shoot. We were looking to book from Washington D.C. to Barcelona for a cruise in October. In April the r/t was about 675.00...not bad by any means but we thought we had lots of time so we would watch. Travelling with another couple from a different state we decided we would wait until we were together to book. We started watching in June...flights up to 900.00 and changing on an hourly basis. We then saw a decent flight for 825.00.thought we better grab it !..we did and 2 weeks later it was back down to 690.00. Bottm line,whenever you book,set it aside and stop looking at prices!!!!

[southtexaspop]

Judie - Thanks for the input. The situation you experienced is exactly what I'm concerned about. Further, as we are planning on going early to spend some time in Istanbul and planning on spending a couple of days in Athens at cruise end, it's probably more important to me to get the schedule I want than 'possibly' saving a few bucks by waiting. Thanks again.

I see you are going on the Century in October. We're going in November out of Barcelona to France, Italy, Cosica and Morocco. Have a great cruise.

Joe

[Keith1010]

My experience is usually to book sooner rather than later. Once in a while the price ends up going down but many time it goes up. We would rather just lock in and get our seat assigments and firm everything up.

 

With that said, it's good to have a sense of what a good fare is so we start looking at it as early as possible.

Keith

[vivian02]

Joe,

I have been pretty good at this having visited Europe for the last 5 years straight. I just ran a quick check SAT to IST, ATH to SAT and I was suprised at what poped up. I will cut and past this so you can see. I used the dates April 10 as a departure and April 24 as a return. Notice the 1 hour lay over at Frankfurt is tight but not bad for that airport. Paris is the Airport you have to be careful with. Anyway take a look, I think the price is right:

 

This is a multi-airport itinerary. Please review all the airports below.

Flight 1 Information – Thu 10 Apr 2008

This flight leaves and arrives on different dates.

American Airlines

Flight 2286 Departs: 9:55a

San Antonio (SAT) Arrives: 11:00a

Dallas/ Ft Worth Intl (DFW)

Coach | Aircraft: McDonnell Douglas MD-80 | 1h 05m

[ Layover in Dallas/Fort Worth, TX (DFW) for 3h 45m ]

American Airlines

Flight 70 Departs: 2:45p

Dallas/ Ft Worth Intl (DFW) Arrives: 7:20a

Frankfurt (FRA)

Coach | Aircraft: Boeing 777 | 9h 35m

[ Layover in Frankfurt, Germany (FRA) for 1h 45m ]

Turkish Airlines

Flight 8540 Departs: 9:05a

Frankfurt (FRA) Arrives: 12:50p

Ataturk (IST)

Coach | Aircraft: Airbus Industrie A321 | 2h 45m

 

Flight 2 Information – Thu 24 Apr 2008

Aegean Airlines

Flight 832 Departs: 11:15a

Eleftherios V. (ATH) Arrives: 1:25p

Frankfurt (FRA)

Coach | Aircraft: Airbus Industrie A320 | 3h 10m

[ Layover in Frankfurt, Germany (FRA) for 1h 00m ]

American Airlines

Flight 83 Departs: 2:25p

Frankfurt (FRA) Arrives: 4:50p

O'Hare Inter*national (ORD)

Coach | Aircraft: Boeing 767-300 Passenger | 9h 25m

[ Layover in Chicago, IL (ORD) for 2h 35m ]

American Airlines

Flight 1603 Departs: 7:25p

O'Hare Inter*national (ORD

 

I found this on Kayak, the price is under a thousand. This should give you a good place to start looking. Tim

[southtexaspop]

Tim and Keith: Thanks for your input. For the time being I'm going to keep looking for a very short while before doing any booking. Joe