I will be flying from Atlanta to Orlando on December 16th. I’ve done some research and 60 days out seems to be the advice, but I am afraid waiting too close to Christmas Holiday might be a bad move. Does anyone have experience with this flight and month? Delta currently is priced at about $220. Thanks in advance!
Kayak.com offers some nice fare tracker type charts that show historical pricing fluctuations N Days before the flight. Other sites might as well, but I’d suggest taking a look there to get a feel for what the typical fare price is and when the low points are to give you an idea if you should wait or pull the trigger ASAP.
They also offer alerts where they will email you on price fluctuations in your route of interest…
We fly Southwest in December. Our return flight is usually around the Thursday before Christmas so we tend to purchase our flights when the dates are released from Southwest in May because of the close proximity to Christmas travel. Last year when we purchased in May there may have been some flights that were cheaper later in the year but we wanted to have first choice of our departure and return flight times since some flight times will sell out quicker.
These days, there is almost no “sweet-spot” for purchasing, other than to simply purchase as soon as you know your dates and find a price you’re happy with. The algorithms used are far more complicated than simply # of days. The closer you get, the more chance of crappy departure/arrival times and/or connections. For that time of year, I’d book sooner rather than later.