Not really sticking it to us
Yes they are sticking it to us, plus less flights to choose from!
I just booked my son's Christmas ticket last week and paid $120 more than last year. I did manage to get him non-stops both ways -- JFK to Seattle. I have found that flights to the west coast are a little cheaper out of JFK than Newark or LaGuardia.
I am employed in aviation education and hate to say that the airlines really aren't "sticking" it to us. As fuel and other costs increase, they have not been able to raise fares much. $99 to Orlando sounds good, but even with a full airplane it's almost impossible to make money.
The airlines only have two choices.....fill up the airplanes till they almost overflow (and virtually every flight I have been on recently has been FULL), and hope that enough business/first class passengers fly to pick up the slack. Everyone in the industry knows that all the profit comes from the front of the aircraft, and all the headaches come from the back! And with the current state of the economy, fewer companies are sending people on airline trips.
Here are my suggestions to get good airfare....
1. Book early...that means between 30 and 60 days out. If the airplane starts to fill up, prices start to rise.
2. Fly from airports with competition. If one airline dominates either airport, you aren't going to get good fares....no different than any other industry.
3. Fly during the week.....I know it is hard to do but Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday flights tend to be cheaper.
3. Look at secondary airports within driving range. It might be cheaper to drive two hours to pick up your kid......depends on how cheap the flight is!
4. If you book with Southwest (which will let you change to another ticket at no additional charge), get your reservation as soon as possible. You can always change it later if the price goes down or the days off change.
5. Use sites like kayak.com, expedia.com, bing.com, orbitz or travelocity. Compare your results....sometimes they differ......before you book the flight, go to the actual airline site...sometimes they have better deals.
6. If you use a site like BING, there is a fare predictor.....it may not be that accurate, but it is something. yapta.com does some of the same things.
7. Sign up for email fare sales. Travelocity and others will let you track certain routes and will email you if the price goes down.
8. From large metro areas, try all the airports. On sites like Kayak, you can have it search nearby airports. Other ways to to it are to use NYC (all New York area airports) or CHI (all Chicago airports) in the search engine.
9. Go the opposite direction with round trips. For example, Newark to Orlando round trip is expensive over Christmas, but Orlando to Newark is much cheaper due to lower demand. This will sound complicated, but it could save some $$. If I found that MCO to EWR was the cheaper round trip, but I really wanted to go EWR to MCO, it might be worth buying a one way EWR to MCO ticket to get home for Thanksgiving. Then to get back, buy a MCO to EWR round trip that flies to Newark after Thanksgiving, then "returns" to Orlando at the beginning of Christmas break. It can get complicated, but if you go counter-flow you can save 10%-20% each time on some routes.
10. Experiment with different routes, airports and times......sometimes you can link together one or two airfare sales to get a pretty good fare.
Sites like the following have some good hints and tips.....happy flying
http://www.airfarewatchdog.com
http://www.independenttraveler.com/
http://www.farecompare.com/