Will airline ticket prices go down for an October Flight?

Question

Neither me or my fiance have flown before so our honeymoon will be our first flight. We will be going to St. Lucia in October.

When I checked prices in Feb, the tickets were about $750 pp... I checked today and they the lowest are $930 pp!!!

I have no idea how pricing works, will the prices go back down between now and October? A friend had told me that they usually buy their airline tickets about 2 months ahead of time... I don't want to get ripped off if I buy now, but I don't want the prices to keep going up either!

Answer 1

They will probably fluctutate a little, but its doubtful they will go down by much.

Statiscally, the best time to buy non-holiday airline tickets is between 3 and 6 weeks from your date of departure.

Answer 2

With the price of oil being so high still, airlines have cut back the number of flights so that they can make more money per flight.  Analysts see no relief of high oil until maybe next year.  Therefore I would recommend you keep looking and maybe even ask a travel agent for some help.  Another idea is to fly into another airport in the Caribbean and take a local airline to get to St. Lucia.

Answer 3

They do generally go up, the only thing that may change is fuel prices (those are going up now but whenever Congress reconvenes they miraculously shoot back down, tell me that's not suspicious.)

Answer 4

Keep an eye on web site that  deal with airline ticket prices.

Answer 5

I heard on the radio this morning (NPR) that Orbitz.com was starting a new deal where if you buy a ticket through them, and the fare goes down, they will refund you the difference (minimum of $5, maximum of $250).

Farecast.com offers the same (not sure about min and max, though) for an extra $10, and it isn't offered for every route.

But generally they go up as time goes by.  Sometimes you get lucky and find a sale, but the sale is rarely from where you live to where you want to go on the days you want to go there.  On the other hand, while most people say the price of oil is only going to go up, there are those people who say that the market is overinflated and the price of oil is about to plummet, like it did after the shortage in the 1970s.  If that were to happen, airfares would likely drop significantly.  But I'm not holding my breath on that one...