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I booked with Delta for Dec. 2011 last month ($700 or so a person out of KY) worried prices would go up or flights would be to full. Looked online later at the flight and it was only about 10% full maybe. Makes me think there will be seats and deals available later...it's a crap shot though.
Airfares come out around the 300 day mark. You should always watch the trends and jump on fares when they are good. We do not get direct flights from our areas so when connections are involved it's best to book early as you get the choice af flights. We find if you wait you get terrible flight times and waste valuble vacation time.
VickiJ...
I live in Cincinnati as well and booked airfare from Dayton for the exact reason you listed...better prices and better times. I think it's such a rip off what they charge at CVG. I have also flown into Louisville for price reasons.
Check around at other airports or hubs and get a friend to drive you there and pick you up when you return. It may be worth a little extra hassle in the long run and in the pocketbook.
I just booked for a trip to CTI thru and agent arriving in Jamaica in December. in the week it took to make a decision between the initial quote and the booking, airfare (and my quote) went up about $300.00 per person. I have seen it rise further since then and am not glad I went ahead and locked in. It's a gamble though.
I wish you the best of luck and hope you don't have to cancel.
I'm with you on a lot of that. I think there are many factors influencing prices. At least there will likely be some sort of fall fare sale closer to November so at least they might be able to avoid that early booking markup.Quote:
Originally Posted by Sea Ya Soon
What I have found is the airfare to Jamaica is best 4 to 6 months in advance. Look at airport near you, even if you have to drive an hour or two. We live 15 min from a Delta Hub, CVG, and have been driving an hour or 2 away to save big money. CVG $1200 per ticket, Dayton on Airtran $410 per ticket. A 55 min drive, low cost parking, and a BIG savings.
Hubby has been concerned, as well. We usually don't book too far ahead, maybe a few mos b/c circumstances are unknown w/ the little one & who will keep her. He just finagled the dates around when we want to go in August & wallah...price went down drastically...g/l to all!
Good thing we booked early, I've been watching and prices are slowly creeping up. It's a hit and miss, sometimes when you book early it can be an advantage and sometimes not, in this case, I've been keeping an eye on oil prices and airline policies. I knew oil prices were going to skyrocket and heard through the grapevine that airline fees were on the up rise this summer. So I booked airfare early, this way at least we're locked into that price. I'm pretty sure airfare will not go down and if it does, it won't go down by that much for me to have to beat myself in the head with a bat that I booked too early :)
It's a real rip off actually, airlines keep this up and no one will be traveling by air except for the business people who have to. We are from Canada and flying out from Toronto is so much more then flying out from Detroit so we usually fly from there.
We found when booking our last airfare that the prices were much lower if you actually purchase the tickets during the week regardless of what day you are flying. The airlines seem to put their lower prices out starting on Tuesday and jack up their prices on the weekends. I guess they figure that is when most people are online trying to buy tickets. Saved us a lot of money. Good luck.
We are also booked for Nov. 2011 (since March 2010!!) and have been watching airfare. Last year we paid a total of 840 RT for 2. This year it is hovering at $1500 RT for 2. I REFUSE to pay that much. If it doesn't go down to something reasonable, we will cancel and book a cruise (yuck).
Thank you to everyone who took the time to reply! We have now booked our flight and will not be canceling the trip :)
As suggested, we checked the fare from a small commuter airport close to home and found that each ticket was $200 less than from Minneapolis. This makes no sense to me, but we did it! Maybe we were just lucky - who knows. I still believe that we paid WAY too much for the tickets, but I have no confidence that prices will go down this summer.
It will be worth it - when we're on the beach at CSA in November!!
Jan, I live near MPLS as well, I am interested which small commuter airport you are talking about and where did you purchase your tickets?
moelouhill,
We live north of Duluth and booked our flight out of the Hibbing airport. Not only were the tickets less expensive, we saved a 400 mile round trip commute to Minneapolis. Good luck booking your tickets!
We returned from CN on April 24th. We attended a wedding in Playa del Carmen prior to our arrival so we flew American Airlines from Chicago to Cancun, Cancun to Miami, Miami to MBJ, and MBJ back to Chicago (never again...4 customs & immigrations...). We locked into our airfare on November 18th for $818 per person for all flights. I had been watching it on Yapta which is a great site for tracking your flights prices. It was as much as $150 pp higher within the 2 months I was tracking it. They will update you via email weekly and you can also log on to check it at any time. They also have a graph that shows you the pricing as it goes up or down from the date that you input.
I continued to watch it even after we booked and one month before we left the price was was about $1600 per person. By a week before we went, it was just over $2000 per person.
We lucked out at the $818 since it never did go down from that price. If you know your flights, plug them into Yapta a keep an eye on it, it may help you in your decision. Good luck!
If you use a site like www.yapta.com and track all the airports around you for a deal, you can find them. We book our air part of our trip about 7 months ahead of our trip.
You can save a lot of money sometimes if you drive an hour or three. Our local airport ,Cincinnati & Northern Kentucky, wanted $1057 per ticket,, Dayton a hour away was $410 Airtran. The ticket is now $907 each on Airtran from Dayton.
You may also want to look into a flight the night before on a low cost airline, spend the night, and fly to Jamaica on a low cost airline like Spirit or Airtran.
Do not give up, work at it and you come back home.
Well, we are traveling from Chicago. We just purchased our airfare from AirTran for $844.50 for 2 people to Montego Bay in September. Listening to all of your airfare prices, that seems to have been a steal. The airfare I purchased not to long ago from Chicago to Reno was higher then what we paid to go to Jamaica. Go figure!
Booked back in Dec. for sept. paid 704.00 for 2 ckd today 1788.00 for same trip.
Wow, after reading all of these replies, I realize again how fortunate we are to live in north Florida. A short drive to Orlando where we get a short, direct flight to MBJ on Jet Blue at only $89 pp each way. I booked two days ago for our November trip.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Janicek
Wow... We fly out of Miami and it's 283 p/p round trip. Where did you find your tickets?
Oh how we miss Air Jamaica in Chicago! We have been going to Jamaica every year since 2003 and always flew AJ prior to this year. We were on the very last AJ flight from MBJ to Chicago last April. We never paid more that $700 for the 2 of us and the flight got you to Mobay at 10:30 AM and the return fkight left at 5:40 PM. Ah the good ol' days...... Come back to us AJ!!!
Its been tough watching the prices keep going up even though we are booked for our next trip, I hope they start having some deals soon.
On the Jet Blue web site. As far as I know, they are only available there.Quote:
Originally Posted by SnR<3
Also, that $89 is each way and you still have to add all of the nuisance fees. The bottom line comes out at $276 p/p round trip.
We booked our trip in April of 2010 for this weekend (yeah!!!). I am not a good flier so I don't do it often (twice in my life) but our friend's wife that is traveling with us said it is better to book early and get a good/reasonable price than to wait and maybe save $50 or even have to pay hundreds more. She flies constantly for work is gone 2-3 weeks out of every 30 days so I took her advice since she practically lives on planes. We wound up booking our airfare in August 2010 and total round trip for both of our tickets, taxes/fees included, was about $840 for a non-stop out of Charlotte. We have to drive 3 1/2 hours to get to Charlotte but that price is much lower than the airport 20 minutes down the road from us and it is non-stop which is good for a cry baby like me (get it over with all in one flight). Looking at the prices now we would be paying at least $400-500 more if we had waited.
We booked our airfare in December for our November 2011 trip. I am so glad we did. We have 18 other couples booked and the ones that waited to book until April/May paid MUCH more than everyone else who booked in December. That's how it goes though right?
We are all from MN too!