How do you monitor flight prices?

[SL6827]

Ok, so I have to book two tickets to San Diego with Delta for early December. I have more than enough time to scout out the prices for then. So how is the best way to monitor prices. I know what a really good price for them will be, but need to know what/how is the best way to monitor for that price.

 

[tnolan]

On a website called Flightaware, I believe they keep track of prices for you.

 

[shoreward]

On a website called Flightaware, I believe they keep track of prices for you.

FlightAware actually tracks status and path of a flight, as well as history of departures and arrivals.

For airline fares, one can consult www.airfarewatchdog.com. When signing up for their emailed updates, a specific route can be monitored for changes in fares.

 

[Esmeralda91]

You can also use Google Flights to search for, then track the price of a flight.

 

[KPeterso]

I use the Hopper App. I go in and put the dates and cities in that I would like to see flights and then it tracks those for me. I get alerts on my phone and it also provides predictions of what the flight prices might do (ie expect it to go up or down and when). I still regularly check flight prices myself, but this is my way of keeping tabs on things too.

 

[Sabres431]

I am a big fan of google flights.

 

[Mollygirl21]

I use the Hopper app

 

[SL6827]

Thanks. I knew you guys would know what sites to use.

 

[sam_gordon]

Another vote for google flights. You can limit by airline or even have it monitor multiple airports.

 

[SL6827]

I use the Hopper App. I go in and put the dates and cities in that I would like to see flights and then it tracks those for me. I get alerts on my phone and it also provides predictions of what the flight prices might do (ie expect it to go up or down and when). I still regularly check flight prices myself, but this is my way of keeping tabs on things too.

Does the Hopper not scan for Delta? I loaded it up and it did not show one Delta flight for me.

 

[jec6613]

Does the Hopper not scan for Delta? I loaded it up and it did not show one Delta flight for me.

Almost no apps scan American, and Delta and United are frequently left out as well, as they use very extensive integrated booking systems, linked to international carriers (OneWorld, SkyTeam, and Star Alliance) that cost real money (in the case of American, IBM money) to connect to. You'll have to visit their websites periodically.

One thing I do is go to the airport's Wikipedia page and check a list of destinations and on which airlines. Once I have the very few airlines picked out, I go to their sites individually. Since American, Delta, United, Alaska, and Hawaiian use fare buckets, their prices almost never go down and will always go up as you get closer to the date of travel. Southwest, Spirit, Frontier, and other LCCs use a different pricing structure involving fare sales from predicted and actual sales and load figures, and JetBlue is a hybrid system, so those are the ones to track if you care.

And if you fly a lot, you should check which airlines service your normal routes the best and go full bore into that one airline. The perks you get once you hit 25,000 miles or so with a single airline in a single year are substantial and worth real money, and have saved me thousands over if I had always gone for the cheapest flight. 25,000 is hard to hit with domestic flights, but even a single long international sector can put you over easily, and almost all of the overseas carriers will credit your domestic mileage program. For instance, when I flew Cathay JFK-HKG (yeah, that's a loooonnnnnnngggg flight) I booked on Cathay but got 20k+ mileage credit on American. Flying SAA JFK-JNB is another great example, you can get United miles from it and that's a 16k mile RT nonstop.

 

[FindingTheMouse]

I use a combination of Hopper, Google Flights and Kayak. Kayak does what they call hacker fares. This is where you fly multiple airlines to give you the best price. Example fly to Orlando on Delta, but fly home on American. You can set up Kayak to give you updates on if the price for your date has gone up or down.

 

[sam_gordon]

Almost no apps scan American, and Delta and United are frequently left out as well, as they use very extensive integrated booking systems, linked to international carriers (OneWorld, SkyTeam, and Star Alliance) that cost real money (in the case of American, IBM money) to connect to. You'll have to visit their websites periodically.

Google flights scans all of them (does not do Southwest however).

I use a combination of Hopper, Google Flights and Kayak. Kayak does what they call hacker fares. This is where you fly multiple airlines to give you the best price. Example fly to Orlando on Delta, but fly home on American. You can set up Kayak to give you updates on if the price for your date has gone up or down.

Google flights has done that for me in the past.

 

[SL6827]

Delta will be the airline, as it is direct. Sky scanner monitors Delta, and Google Flights as well.

 

[jec6613]

Google flights scans all of them (does not do Southwest however).

Unfortunately, it does not handle the entire AA network. I'm not sure how they're getting their data, but it isn't a direct SABRE connection (they didn't pay for one), and I've found it unreliable at best. It does handle the west coat pretty well though.

Bing flights, on the other hand, does indeed pay for connections and will list more flights than Google. Using any aggregator though I've found to just be too much work compared to taking a few minutes and checking a few airlines directly.

 

[Denise W]

Delta will be the airline, as it is direct. Sky scanner monitors Delta, and Google Flights as well.

Don’t you want a non stop flight? Direct flights have a stop but no plane change.
Denise

 

[SL6827]

Don’t you want a non stop flight? Direct flights have a stop but no plane change.
Denise

??

 

[Denise W]

Direct flights are not the same as non stop flights.
Denise

 

[jec6613]

Don’t you want a non stop flight? Direct flights have a stop but no plane change.
Denise

Direct usually refers to any flight without a plane change, with or without a stop. Southwest is weird and uses the terms non-interchangably, but even then they're not consistent about it.

??

Old usage from pre-deregulation, but a direct flight used to categorically mean a flight with multiple sectors where the flight number did not change. Nowadays it's not officially defined as such but the usual meaning hasn't changed. The Official Airline Guide still uses this terminology.

For instance, JNB-JFK and JNB-IAD on SAA using an A340 and usually make a stop in Dakar, most of the year, for both passengers and fuel. That would be a direct flight. In the US domestic market, almost all of the direct routes are flown by WN, while AA re-uses flight numbers for a return trip (their network is so large that they can't use unique flight numbers).

A non-stop flight, on the other hand, is a flight that takes you to your destination without stopping. JNB-ATL (which is a longer distance than JFK and IAD) on Delta is an example, which uses a 777-200LR to fly without a fuel stop.

 

[SL6827]

Oh, ok. I thought they were one in the same. But ya, Delta- nonstop.