I feel you!! I've been searching for a flight April 18th - April 28th from SFO to Montego Bay and I've been confronted with some outrageous and discouraging prices! Tickets were also in the $800-$1,000 dollar range! Which is insane! I've never paid over $500 rt and I'm all the way over on the westcoast. I'm crossing my fingers that the prices go down in the next few months.

You can improve on your flight costs by being more flexible with the dates. You want to fly out on a Friday and return on a Sunday. Unfortunately, Those are the most expensive days to fly.

Adjusting your flight to fly out on a Saturday and return on a Monday or the following Saturday changes the ticket cost substantially.

Check Kayak.com and try different dates. I saw some roundtrip tickets end of April NJ to MBJ for $419-433. If I were you, I'd wait it out a bit more. I'm sure you can score tickets for even less than that in about a month. Right now all the major sales promotions I've been seeing stretch from now to the end of March.