I worked for an airline fare pricing startup. The key to getting a lower fare is to not be flying for business.
Since airlines can't outright ask you if you're flying business, they'll instead offer tradeoffs that a business flier won't make. So plan in advance, but be flexible in trading off day-of-week or time-of-day.
I anecdotally find flight prices tend to follow a cosine wave. Starting high, dipping a couple months before, and shooting back up. You can see these sorts of trends on Google Flights which will show historical pricing for your search query.
And it can be helpful if you’re very flexible. If my dates are very strict then I’ll tend to book further in advance, whereas if I have a lot of wiggle room then I’ll wait it out.
The real answer is that it depends. With fare management, a small allocation of cheap tickets might be made available when the flight is listed (e.g. 350 days in advance) however more cheap tickets may be added or removed over time depending on how sales go when compared to airline projections.
recently, i bought a full economy fare on an international flight. When i went to check in, they offered a really cheap upgrade to first. it was a no brainer and i was excited since the flight was gonna be ~6 hours.
i had a rude awakening when i got to the airport. This "first class" ticket was actually more like a premium economy ticket. I didn't get access to the first class check in line, no access to the lounge, no priority boarding, and the seats themselves had no extra bonus other than being in the front of the plane and slightly wider.
it was at that moment i realized there was no beating airlines and good deals aren't really that good unless you got the money to spend.
This article got me into the fascinating rabbit hole of airline websites for travel agencies.
It turns out most airlines have one, and while some content seems to be gated behind contracts and login walls, a lot of it is just out there.
Compared to the consumer-focused sites, there's a lot less marketing fluff and a lot more industry lingo (which Google and/or a frontier model can usually help you with). Most of the content is just weird aviation trivia; those sites won't let you book a flight, but you will learn a lot of minutiae about how an Amdeus PNR looks like, how to indicate that a passenger is carrying human ashes in Sabre, or what order an agent needs to make bookings in.
Some interesting things I found, in no particular order:
Very interesting article... however I’ve looked into the service (JetBack) and it seems extremely suspicious. It’s the first time I’m hearing about airlines refunding fare drops, so I’ve asked a friend who’s an airline points geek and he says it’s bullshit. Eh?
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[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 34.0 ms ] threadIt would seem that the old rule of thumb of booking long in advance to get a cheaper ticket isn’t really relevant anymore?
Since airlines can't outright ask you if you're flying business, they'll instead offer tradeoffs that a business flier won't make. So plan in advance, but be flexible in trading off day-of-week or time-of-day.
And it can be helpful if you’re very flexible. If my dates are very strict then I’ll tend to book further in advance, whereas if I have a lot of wiggle room then I’ll wait it out.
i had a rude awakening when i got to the airport. This "first class" ticket was actually more like a premium economy ticket. I didn't get access to the first class check in line, no access to the lounge, no priority boarding, and the seats themselves had no extra bonus other than being in the front of the plane and slightly wider.
it was at that moment i realized there was no beating airlines and good deals aren't really that good unless you got the money to spend.
It turns out most airlines have one, and while some content seems to be gated behind contracts and login walls, a lot of it is just out there.
Compared to the consumer-focused sites, there's a lot less marketing fluff and a lot more industry lingo (which Google and/or a frontier model can usually help you with). Most of the content is just weird aviation trivia; those sites won't let you book a flight, but you will learn a lot of minutiae about how an Amdeus PNR looks like, how to indicate that a passenger is carrying human ashes in Sabre, or what order an agent needs to make bookings in.
Some interesting things I found, in no particular order:
https://www.lufthansaexperts.com/shared/files/lufthansa/publ...
https://www.lufthansaexperts.com/shared/files/lufthansa/publ...
https://www.qatarairways.com/tradeportal/en/bookingnticketin...
https://support.travelport.com/webhelp/Smartpoint1P/Content/...
https://pro.delta.com/content/agency/us/en/site-map.html
https://pro.delta.com/content/agency/us/en/policy-library/di...
https://air.flyingway.com/books/amadeus/Amadeus_Guide.pdf