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Booking flights early has paid off the last 2 Year’s. Last year we paid around $550 from our small local airport booking 10.5 months in advance and today booked (from local airport) for Jan 4-12 for $527 each for 4 of us. Great price. Even having to pay for a couple checked bags is still cheaper then driving 4 hours and staying overnight to fly SW.
It was so nice getting home and only driving 30min.
Nice work!!! Though I will say that there really is no rhyme or reason to how airlines set pricing. Load factors as well as the competitive environment set the tone. The last couple weeks I have seen pricing closer to what we saw a couple of years ago. The last year, the pricing has been rather high, compared to years past. From the West Coast of the US it has traditionally been cheaper to fly to Cancun than it has been to Jamaica, though with pricing like this it makes it tougher to choose between the two, where Cancun scored points for the cheaper flights before. Now if we can get more nonstop options from the West Coast.Quote:
Originally Posted by mjc12771
Weird thing is ORD-MBJ was more expensive then our flight from CWA-ORD-MBJ. I would have thought the Chicago flight should be cheaper.
It may be related to competition. We fly American here-PHL-MBJ, and a couple of years ago Delta added an option here-DTW-MBJ with low introductory prices. American dropped their prices quite a bit in response - for a few months.
Last October was near impossible to find a decent flight from ORD (not our local airport) to arrive at a reasonable time at MBJ, never mind at a decent price. As it turns out, the only decent price and schedule we could find was American ORD-PHI-MBJ for $608 pp. This worked well, schedule wise, because we surprised some friends from the Philadelphia area who were traveling the same day. Their price, $608 pp.
Maybe because October is off season but check SW out of Chicago Midaway. I believe they have daily nonstop. Our flight leaves our little airport at 5:55 am and arrives at MBJ at 1:05. Not to bad.Quote:
Originally Posted by Chris B