Question from an infrequent flyer re: rates

Factual Questions
1

We’re trying to book a flight to Gen Con (in Indianapolis, at the end of July) from San Francisco. Unfortunately, everything we can find is either ridiculously expensive, horribly inconvenient (as in, it takes way longer than it should to get from point A to point B, and includes long layovers in places we’d rather not lay over, like Detroit), or both.

My question is: if we wait longer, will it only get worse, or do airlines add other flights to their schedules or drop prices? I’d like to get this squared away, but I don’t want to pay the high prices if the chances are good that waiting will get us something better.

Please explain it to me in small words, and assume I have a lot of ignorance to fight. I’m seriously pretty clueless about how airline scheduling works. Our proposed flight dates are 7/28 out and August 2 home.

Thanks!

2

Detroit is an excellent airport for layovers. They have a new mile-long terminal and Wetzel’s Pretzels.

Gen Con is huge, and Indianapolis is not. You’re probably already far too late to find good fares for that timeframe. Airline flights and terminal space are a finite resources and airlines are not going to add more flights at the last minute, barring extraordinary circumstances. They will happily take advantage of the demand and charge higher fares, though.

You might try setting a fare alert via Kayak to see if anything good shows up.

3

You could take Southwest Airlines to Indianapolis, but I believe that you can’t price or book Southwest flights on most of the big travel websites (Expedia, Travelocity, etc.). Instead you need to go directly to their website. For those dates, I’m finding round-trip fares starting at about $500.

If not, it looks like Chicago is about three hours away by car. You could fly into Chicago and rent a car from there.

And the Microsoft Bing search tool has a price predictor that might help you to decide.

4

Airfares are unlikely to change much, certainly not get much better. Fuel prices are stable, rising slightly, while demand is growing steadily, so no airline’s going to start a fare war. There are unlikely to be new discount airlines jumping into the Indianapolis–SFO market before summer.

Consider San Jose or Oakland to Chicago Midway or to Columbus, Ohio, on Southwest. From Chicago you can take Amtrak or Megabus, or rent a car. The advantage of the car is the flexibility it gives you on accommodations in Indianapolis: you can stay at a Courtyard in Northwest and save enough to pay for the car rental.

5

In general, the earlier you book your flight, the better your rates and flexibility in scheduling transits. Airlines will not/cannot add other flights and last minute airfares are usually more expensive. Book your tickets NOW if your travel dates are set.

6

Airline guy …

What they all said.

It’s only going to get worse between now and 7/28. There is a tiny chance that in the last 12 hours before departure a few seats will go on fire sale. You can wait that long provided you’re willing to skip attending the event if you miss the fire sale or it never happens. Or if you’re willing to take the gamble and pay full fare at the last minute if you lose the bet.

Note the above trick also means you might get fire sale prices to travel out there, but be stuck paying full fare to get home. Which would almost certainly mean spending more in total than buying the cheapest round trip you can find today.

I also endorse looking at other airports. SFO is capacity constrained, and full of folks who don’t care what it costs, since they’re spending the shareholder’s money. Airlines price for scarcity value accordingly. Consider flying out of Sacremento or even Fresno in addition to the other Bay Area airports. The drive is no fun, but you might be paying yourself $50/hour/person which isn’t so bad.

7

I did a quick search on Matrix.itasoftware.com (great website for finding cheap flights as the search parameters are wonderfully flexible). In fact, being flexible on days is going to give you the best deals. For example:

Leavingon US Airways SFO to IND 7/27-8/03 is $317.20 with about an hour layover in PHX (Phoenix) each way .

8

Airline fares are pretty high now. I just read an article that reviewed a study of airline prices over the past couple of years. “Typically”, and you need to take that with a grain of salt when looking at one specific date, prices are high 12 months out and slowly decrease until six to 12 weeks before a date. Prices start to increase and then skyrocket up until the date of the flight. But, practically speaking, anytime two to four months out seems to be when prices are statistically the lowest. You are nearing that “sweet spot”, being about three months out. So, to echo the previous posts, while you may find a decrease on some specific day from some specific airline, you probably can’t count on it, and in general prices aren’t likely to go much lower.

And, yes, you won’t see Southwest on Expedia, Kayak, etc. You need to go to Southwest’s website to see their fares. The same probably applies to other discount airlines that might serve the routes you are looking at. On Kayak, check the boxes that allow it to search nearby airports on both ends, as well as the box for flexible travel dates. You will see alternatives that you might not see otherwise. Sometimes, staying an extra night makes a big difference in airfare… but you have to factor in another night in a hotel.

9

If you search on Kayak, they have a nifty tool that tries to estimate whether airfares are expected to go up or down if you don’t book today.

Of course, nobody can guarantee the future. Not even a travel website.

10

If you’re ready to consider an extended rental car drive, check rates to Louisville KY or Dayton OH. Both used to be known as lower cost alternative airports and both border on interstates to take you to Indy. Of course you’re NOT taking the car out of state, right?? :slight_smile:

11

Dave Barry described airfares as

"On any flight

  • No two passengers will have paid the same amount
  • Everyone else paid less than you"
12

Long story short, buy your tickets two months in advance and brace yourself for lousy schedules.

A recent statistical study found that the most expensive day to buy a ticket is one day before the flight and the second most expensive is the day of the flight while the cheapest time to buy a ticket is about six weeks out. But that’s based on averages. Your flight might not be average.

On any given flight, there are some cheap seats which will be sold first and then the remaining seats get more and more expensive when there are fewer and fewer seats left. If you wait until the day before the flight to buy your ticket and you get the very last seat, you’ll end up paying a LOT more money than if you’d bought your ticket six weeks in advance.

But there are exceptions to that rule. If the tickets aren’t selling, the airline will DROP the prices in order to encourage more people to take that flight. They really want the plane to be full.

So, you have to figure out whether the flight you’ll be on is one of those cases where demand is high or where demand is low. If demand is high then you should book your ticket as far in advance as you possibly can. Eight months out is not unheard of. If demand is low, you’re better off waiting until four weeks before the flight in order to get the maximum discount.

Unfortunately, you can’t know for sure if your flight is high demand or low demand. So if you buy your ticket six to twelve weeks out, you’re probably okay.

But you also should remember that the cheapest tickets are NON REFUNDABLE. For example, if you buy tickets eight months in advance of a rock concert, and then they change the date of the concert six months out, then you’re stuck with a ticket on the wrong day. The good news is that when they say “non refundable”, what they really mean is that you’ll pay a huge penalty when you ask for a refund. So if you paid $375 for a round-trip ticket and then ask for a refund, the penalty might be $200 and you only get $175 back.

The other thing that affects the price is the convenience factor. The airline might schedule five flights a day on the same route, and the ones that leave at a reasonable time and arrive at a reasonable time will be the most expensive. The cheap ones will require that you get up at 3 AM to drive to the airport, or even worse they’ll have you depart at night and arrive the next morning, having gotten very little sleep–that’s called a “red eye”. So you have to decide what’s more important to you, saving money or having a schedule that won’t turn you into a zombie. The cheaper the ticket, the less comfortable you’ll be.

I highly recommend http://matrix.itasoftware.com/ for finding flights.

13

Actually, in this case i think you can probably safely assume that it will be a high-demand flight.

It’s a gaming convention that attracts over 50,000 people. The OP is flying from San Francisco, smack in the middle of one of North America’s prime locations for gaming nerds.

14

Had the OP explained what the heck “Gen Con” is that’d have helped.

A convention of 50K in a [del]backwater[/del] second-tier city like Indianapolis is going to strain the capacity of the IND airport, the airlines, the hotels, the rental car agencies, etc.

Reserve everything today. And be glad you’re getting it as cheaply as you are. Prices will go nowhere but straight up from today. Contrary to my earlier post, there will not be any last-minute fire sales, because there won’t be any unsold anything.

15

Thanks, everybody. Tickets reserved. I had to call up the airline where I had enough miles to buy one ticket, but not two (because their website didn’t want to let me do it that way) but we’re squared away.

You guys lit a fire under me to get this done, and I appreciate that! :slight_smile:

16

I’d go further and suggest when layovers are necessary, one airport is pretty much like another. If you want to avoid the worst the Midwest has to offer, stay away from O’Hare.

17

I dunno. As a frequent flyer I’ve done a lot of layovers and airports vary considerably in their amenities and atmosphere. A layover at an airport that is too small and suffering capacity problems can be a nightmare. I’d rather gouge my own eyes out than have a two-hour layover at Newark again. On the other hand a modern terminal which is sized appropriately and has good amenities can be a very pleasant experience. Especially if you have an expense account. If I have to layover, I try to do it in places like Detroit, Denver, or Atlanta. (Yes, I said Atlanta!)

18

Just to throw down a real world example I bought round trip tickets from San Francisco to Manila nonstop about 2 weeks ago for may 10th. just rechecked and prices have jumped 20% in those 2 weeks. I paid right about $1000, they are around $1200 now.

19

nm

20

I live where any Bay Area airport works, and I’ve found it is impossible to predict which is cheaper for any given flight. You need to check flights from all three.