Fluxuating Prices: AIRLINES
 

I haven't booked a flight this early before so was hoping Rs could assist with some advice. I was going to book a roundtrip flight from Vancouver to Montreal for the end of July. A week later (today) after confirming my friends were down, the price has now gone up nearly 40%. From ~$550 to >$800

Is this normal? Will it continue fluctuating like this for months, or am I right-fucked.

Anyone heard of airline companies tracking what dates and flights are being searched for, and then increasing prices... or am I way off?

Advice appreciated.

Yes, if you're booking on AC the prices will go up and down every day and sometimes every few hours. I would never book 4 months in advance for places like Toronto or Montreal because there are so many daily flights leaving YVR and tickets are usually the highest when you book 3-4 months in advance. The cheapest ticket you will find for Toronto on AC is $169, I think Montreal would be around $179-$189. By the way, the prices are usually based on the seats the airline sells....you can get a idea on how many tickets are sold by clicking the 'seat map' when you're searching fares.

He's pretty knowledgable, ask him about FLUXuating.
http://metsxtra.mlblogs.com/dr.jpg

If you can't get a hold of him, see if you can find his friend.
http://www.cedmagic.com/featured/bac...citor-real.jpg

Everything he says is right. I've seen the tickets as cheap as 159 to Montreal during their seats sales.

Wow, thanks a lot for the heads up. Would you recommend aircanada.com or another site?


LOL. i see this error now however I got it right on in the text body. Though my other option is getting 1.21 Gigawatts, going back in time, and then booking the flight when our dollar was worth very little.

^
I hate airline travel, prices are so outrageous. When I lived in Australia, you could fly from a major city to another for $50, after tax. And hell, I just bought a return ticket from Vancouver to London for $250 (Before tax). Taxes rape the ass hard.

When I lived in Ireland I could fly on RyanAir (the cheap airline who got famous for being rumoured to start charging for access to the toilets) to the UK and back for about $75 and into continental Europe for $100~

I find aircanada.com to be the cheapest. I would keep checking every day, trust me there are deals to be found. I found a deal last year and it was so last minute (basically 48 hours before departure) from Seattle via Toronto to London(UK)with a direct return flight from London to Vancouver for $600 with tax in.

Another weird thing about AC fares is sometimes it's actually cheaper to connect in let’s say Toronto or Montreal and fly onto a US city. For example, YVR-YYZ onto Miami was on sale for $199 one way last week, YVR to YYZ was $209 one way so go figure.

And Superfived is correct, you can get tickets as cheap as $159.

isnt westjet usually cheaper then AC?

lol at the outrageous airline prices

It can be. I purchased tickets off of Westjet for a roundtrip flight to Montreal for something like $200, taxes in. Westjet regularly has seat sales that rivals most major airlines, including Air Canada. If you're able to adjust your arrival and departure dates, you'll likely be able to find better deals as well.

Westjet and AC have basically the same prices. When one airline puts on a sale, the other does as well. Keep an eye out, there are sales all the time.

Flights go up by the minute. When I booking a trip for my family to Disneyland at Christmas time through Expedia it was such a bitch. First off on Expedia you can only book 6 people at a time and we had 7 going which meant I had to book one group of 3 and one group of 4. I was worried I wouldn't be able to get everyone on the same flights as they filled up and it was an issue because we had little kids and I had to be sure they were all together. I call up expedia figuring they can just book it for me, no dice they can add it to my itinerary but I have to book it.

Well I'm entering in one group the price goes up $80 p/person so booking doesn't go through. Try again same flight +$80 and get first group of four booked on it then go to book the second and boom price has gone up another $100 a person, we're talking about a 5 min span. Go to book the second group now at +$180 p/person then it was about 10 mins previous. It was totally retarded, last time I ever use an online booking site to book a group larger then 6 what a pain in the ass and ended up costing almost an extra $800 in 10 mins.

There's no such thing as a 'discount airline' here I'm Canada. WestJet hardly classifies as 'discount' when you have to pay just as much in taxes as you would for the 'seat sale price'.

As for keeping an eye out for sales and such, I would suggest signing up for travel newsletters. Off the top of my head, Travel zoo and Airfare Watch Dog are good ones. But in the end, you still have to check alirline and online booking sites for ultimate deals.

The price of tix goes down as it gets closer to the day u'r flying. Airline industry is a highly leveraged. The flight is gonna cost roughly the same to the company whether it has no passenger or full capacity.