Paying the price for last minute airfare
July 18, 2007
BoyDucky’s been (let himself be) suckered into depending on United’s E-fares that publish the week of the weekend he’d like to travel. The last time he got complacent and found that United wasn’t going to fly him down to SoCal for less than $350, his coworker came to the rescue reminding him to use Travelocity’s last minute package deals that include airfare and car rental.
This time, however, he’s completely out of luck. Not only did lastminute.com, and various alterations to his itinerary still not turn up any good flight options, he was too late to buy the $166 fare I found, using more inconvenient airports, on farecompare.com. Now that it’s just a couple days before he wants to travel, options are much more severely limited.
If h’s determined to come down this weekend and work out with his team, it’s going to cost at least $250. *shudder* This is why I’d rather make arrangements far in advance and have a plane ticket I can live with that (< $150). I'm so glad that he's already got his tickets for the next weekend (Con weekend). We simply can't afford to keep flying him down at such exhorbitant prices! And I can’t wait until we’re in the same city.
Its a toss up with the flight – sometimes airlines release tickets cheaper to fill a plane up. Its a catch-22, if you buy your tickets early only to find they went on sale is just as frustrating as being stuck paying more for them because you waited.
At least there’s flights.
~Matt~ That’s true, a lot of the time he gets a reasonable fare even if it’s not the rock-bottom price that I get through SW when I book far enough in advance. But his flying SW isn’t worth the trouble he has to go through getting to and from the airport so other airlines are almost always going to be pricier. Right now it seems that the only flight left arrives at midnight and I’m not even sure that it’s a decent price.