Best time to buy plane tickets

[GracesMom]

i have been looking for our plane tickets to STJ for July and am amazed at how much the prices fluctuate for the same flight, anywhere from $532 - $807 per ticket for the same flight! I was wondering if any of you had any advice on the best time to buy tickets? Should I buy now, or wait a month or 2? Thanks for the advice!
Angie

[loria]

if you do a search on 'what is the best time to buy ....' you'll come up with number of things--fare compare says that their research indicate that tuesday afternoon is when discount fares are released (i don't know who runs that site though) but that most discount fares are pulled back on thursday (so buying on the weekend means you are probably paying too much--cheapest days to fly are wednesday followed by tuesday and saturday--early mornings are the cheapest times (this is all for domestic flights)-- this site/article offers slightly (??) more nuanced advice

http://abcnews.go.com/Travel/best-time- ... 704&page=2

[Gigi]

I believe that the prices for summer travel will drop in the next few months. We are headed down in June and I have daily travel alerts set up on Kayak but also do a quick search each night. Last year, I stumbled on a $250 RT from Detroit for July travel. Bing Travel has an airfare predictor that predicts what the fares will do - you can sign up for weekly alerts with them. Right now, the prediction for June is to wait - it is 88% confident that prices will drop.

[Muhaha]

I'm not so sure about that. Oil prices are skyrocketing. 3 years back when oil went above $100, fares went way up along with all sorts of surcharges. Of course, it's difficult to predict if the prices will keep going up.

[Iggy]

Unfortunately, I just heard on a couple of newscasts, that airfares are going to be increasing throughout the next few months. As above the price per barrel oil costs have been only increasing and have no signs of going down.

We have a trip this May planned and the prices have held high since last September. We purchase our tickets last week and it was substantially higher.

[jmq]

If you typically rely on Orbitz or Expedia as your primary search tools for airfare to the Caribbean, you may want to reconsider that, because both recently dropped American Airlines from their listings, and AA is by far the biggest carrier to the region.

http://travel.nytimes.com/2011/01/08/tr ... are&st=cse

Also this article that addresses the original question of the thread:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/09/trave ... are&st=cse

[Hawaii]

I am hoping you are right and that bing travel site is right as well. We are taking our first trip this July with our family and I was going to purchase the day they went up - now I am going to wait to see is it comes back down. I usually like to buy tickets at least 6 months in advance so I do not like to worry but with 4 people that is an extra 400.00 dollars that it went up. Good luck and I hope the prices come down for you too!