We are looking to go next august (the week before Labor Day). Trying to determine a budget, was wondering if there any way for me to determine flight prices for that time of year from the NYC/Long Island area.
Anyone know where I can get this information now? Or care to share what they paid???
Since flights adjust constantly, there’s obviously no real way to give you concrete numbers.
But to get a rough idea, I would say your best bet is to just do a mock-booking using the time frame you would normally book your flight. So for example, if you normally book about 4 months in advance, do one now for January just to get you in the ball park.
Ok, is 4 months abnormal time frame to book?? We booked fairly last minute last time so we did everything at once.
Also…do you think Labor Day would impact the rates??
4-5 months in advance will get you, I believe, pretty low rates. As preparation for my trip next year in September, I did a mock-booking back in early May and saw flights at their lowest outside of sales.
I don’t think the season/holiday impacts the rates, other than maybe Thanksgiving/Christmas, as much as “time before flight” does. You need to hit the “sweetspot” from what I’ve seen, and that seems to be, again, 4-5 months out.
Hopper APP will give you an idea
I read that the 50-60 day mark is the cheapest on average. We planned on that, but then frontier ran a special and we booked 180 days out for $50 round trip.
Timing wise I think it depends upon the airline. We have gone late August on Southwest from upstate NY several times. I book as soon as the fares are released. I have never found the fare lower than then (I had checked in case I could get a credit). I will also add they fares seem to go up right away as people book
We just went in late August and I booked our flights (from DC on United) in April. While I was fine with the price, I later determined that I had booked far too early. 2 months out, the fares were significantly cheaper and I was annoyed. This was probably the earliest I’d every booked a flight, domestic or international and I won’t do it again. If you’re fine waiting it out and taking whatever you get, I would.
Thanks for the info. We are looking to book for a late August 2018 trip as well and used Southwest last year. I want to get the best possible deal. I feel like unless I am coming under $1000 for our family of 4 I am losing the game. 
With just a little bit of checking I’d say that I never paid more than $300 to fly to Orlando from NYC, except for one spring break trip that was around $360.
Barring Thanksgiving, Christmas vacation, spring break, and that weird week that all of the Jersey schools are out there never seemed to be a pattern to the fares.
I had this problem while trying to sort out a budget for our trip such a long way in advance. To get a baseline I went to a travel agent in Australia to get a free quote and let them do me up a price (so I could budget the trip out).
I had the intention of going back and re-doing it myself and finding a cheaper price. Turned out at the end of the day that they were able to get me a deal cheaper than I was able to source myself and I ended up going with them later on anyway.
Ditto on the Hopper app https://www.hopper.com. You will drive yourself crazy trying to sort out when the best prices will be, so let someone else do the analysis for you (based on real data rather than urban myths like “Tuesdays are the best day to book”).
If Southwest or JetBlue are options, in my experience the best time to book with them is the exact moment they open up reservations for your dates. They will often have sales later on, but for me they were never cheaper than the initial fares.
I just came back from a trip 8/23-9/3. We paid $275 rt on SWA out of Islip. I booked the flights back in March. I checked prices at least once a day. They never came down. Unfortunately we were on a cruise without internet when they released fares for our dates. So I don’t know if they were cheaper when they were initially released.
I had similar prices flying out of ISP on SW as @dpgrumpy . Last April I paid about $260 round trip and I have flight booked for December for $241. I was able to find slightly cheaper on Frontier but once you add in the additional fees it wasn’t enough for me to give up the familiar Southwest for the unknown of Frontier.
I’d use that $275 as your estimate and book as soon as SW releases. I imagine that prices will also be higher as you get closer to Labor Day weekend.