Flying to US - when to buy?

M

Manuel

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Hi,
We're looking at flying to Washington DC next April.
I've been monitoring the prices for the last couple of months, and I would say on average they have been slowly creeping up ...

We are two adults and four children. A month or two back there were flights for €2900. Today it's averaging around €3100.

I'm just wondering, from people's experience, are prices likely to keep creeping up, or could they go both ways? Our dates are more than 6 months away still. I'd be a bit reluctant to book this early, but if I got a good price I probably would ...

Any advice appreciated, thanks.
/M.
 
I'd hold off till about 3 months before you go, unless there are public holidays either here or in the US when you want to go, then there's no knowing which way the prices will go. Aer Lingus often have sales (there's one on at the moment to a lot of different locations) - it might be worth getting updates from them.
 
The company I work for use a website called http://www.yapta.com to track flight prices. They have an iphone app too that sends you an alert when the price changes.
I have never used it so I cant comment on its accuracy.
 
Manuel, I payed 940.00 euro back in april for flights to New york for myself and my wife with aer lingus , We are flying out in october, They are now coming in at 2061.00 euro for the same flights in their sale, I like others have no idea how airlines operate regarding seat prices, I would suggest if the price is within your budget then take it, If it goes down there is nothing you can do about it but if it goes up you will pay for it, For what it is worth we travelled with aer lingus to Spain twice this year and booked well in advance and saved hundreds, It is not an exact science but I monitored flights two years ago when we were planning on going to the states with friends who had already booked and they rose considerably, We did not go in the end, This is just my personal experience , Best of luck Manuel.
 
Just another option to consider might be Philadelphia, I flew there when going to DC as it saved nearly €150, it's a reasonably simple train ride (1 train to Phily, then switch to another to DC) which is cheap, though with 4 kids it might be a bit of a palaver. Alternatively, hire a one-way car rental to DC?
 
dereko1969 said:
Just another option to consider might be Philadelphia, I flew there when going to DC as it saved nearly €150, it's a reasonably simple train ride (1 train to Phily, then switch to another to DC) which is cheap, though with 4 kids it might be a bit of a palaver. Alternatively, hire a one-way car rental to DC?
Click to expand...

Also Baltimore, though do factor in the pre-clearance in Dublin for the direct flights as the last thing you want after a long flight with kids is a long queue to clear customs/passport control in america.
 
I've had a few tracker applications running tracking the prices for my dates, and they jumped 70 Euro per person over the weekend, more or less across the board!

From my planespotting days, I remember the airline Summer timetables used to run to the end of September, so maybe there's some significance to the date.

Anyway, I'll keep an eye on the trend in the fares over the winter ... if they continue to go only one way - up - then there'll be no trip to Washington for us, at least for another year ...
 
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