I have never understood how airline ticket pricing works and was reminded of this this weekend when a friend relayed this story to me:

She secured tickets for traveling during PEAK SEASON for her mother-in-law, to fly from Costa Rica to North Carolina during the upcoming Thanksgiving holidays for just around $300, round trip.

However, this same friend of mine was trying to get from Cincinnati to Knoxville, Tenn. this past Friday to get to a college football game, and the airlines wanted to charge her $1200. This is NOT peak season.

When I was married to a Frenchman, I used to be able to travel from Knoxville to Paris for anywhere between $600 to $800, this in the 1990's (all throughout the 1990s -- we traveled there almost every year of our relationship and marriage, a total of 12 years).

Why are prices so arbitrary and so nonsensical? How in the world can one make sure to get a good deal? I have never heard a very good answer. (And how in the world could an airline charge $1200 for a Cincinnati-Knoxville roundtrip flight over a weekend with a Friday and/or Saturday night stayover? I had always heard that those were the cheapest deals.)

Thank you for whatever saint could possibly have the answer to this.

Jennifer

Airlines are funny about pricing, and as a result you get prices all over the map for different destinations. Sometimes it depends on when the ticket is booked; usually booking 14 days out from the date of travel gets you a good rate, but you can push this back to even 21 days, or a month or so. Booking WAY in advance does not always get you a good rate; it depends on where the carrier is going and how popular the flight typically is. Booking in LESS than 14 days will usually cost you more, unless you are booking last minute deals. Remember, seats on planes are perishable; once the plane takes off, they can't sell that seat, so they will offer lower prices at the last minute to get as many seats filled as possible (hotels do this too).

Prices also vary depending on where you are flying to. If you take a major carrier from one or their major hubs to another major hub, you will pay less. If there are multiple flights per day from one location to another, those flights will be priced lower (usually) because they already have plans to make the trip a whole bunch. But, if you are taking a flight that runs once a day every day (or every few days) you might end up paying more because that means those flights aren't usually full, and they want to charge as much as they can for the tickets they DO sell.

You also have to look at what airports you are flying into and out of. Is it a regional airport? A national airport? An international airport? All of those things make a difference in price. My brother lives in a college town in Illinois; flights from his regional airport to my home (DC) run easily over $500 a ticket. But if we fly him out of Indy the price drops to around $250 or $300. If we fly him out of Chicago, we can get flights as low as $120 on special.

As you said, peak times also make a difference. And peak times can be determined by time of day, time of year, and will change for events in the area. If the Super Bowl was being held in LA, prices on flights to LA would skyrocket around the time of the game- even if it was a typical off-peak time.

There is also variance for days of the week - and prices can change BIG time from one day to the next. If possible, when you are planning a trip, try and be flexible on the days you fly - it could save you a few hundred bucks. Again, it all depends on location; places that are big for weekend getaways are more expensive on weekends, big business meeting locations are higher during the week...

So really, it's all a guessing game! :)

What Jillian said is basically correct. Flights in and out of major airports are substantially cheaper than flights in and out of regional airports. Also mid-week (Tues./Wed.) flights are generally the lowest priced as far as days of the week are concerned. Keep in mind that with fuel prices at an all-time high, airline travel is going to be more expensive any way you look at it.

Thank you, jillianleab and s_cianci. That helps.

Jilian answer is spot on, however I would like to add on top of his answer. Lets imagine there are some tickets are going for £500 from London to Dubai, but there is no ticket sold for 4/5 days, the system will automatically reduce the price of the tickets (i.e. £479) then for some reason 6/7 tickets sold on one day the price will automatically increase to higher rate. Also when travel agents advertise about cheap tickets on local classified ads sites that time usually the ticket price goes up too because everyone look for a "cheap deal" which hikes the price. That's my understanding about this system. But also regularly monitoring the ticket prices may also help to get a deal. Sometimes prices goes down for few hours and you just need to grab them without wasting time

That's funny, because my sister lives in France,Marseille to be more specific.A flight from Marseille to JFK cost $600.00.
I went to buy the same flight but from here, same date,escept in reverse.I live in NY.
Price was $900.00. Needless to say, I was shocked.So was my husband.
Can anyone explain that to me? I can't seem to wrap my brain around such big difference in price.