Flights - Sales ??????

GenuineFan

Help anyone !!! Any sales in summer flights coming up with Aer Lingus or Ryanair?

coylemj

If people thought that a sale was pending, nobody would book flights until the sale started in which case the airline would have to give away most of the summer seats at a discount and is not going to happen.

The airlines, like the holiday companies make an estimate as to what volumes of business to expect in the summer. The airlines then publish their summer timetable and the holiday companies block book charter flights and hotels in the various holiday destinations. If they start to see that they have over provided capacity, they will start to offload seats and holidays at discounted prices but their aim from the start will be to avoid this situation. Exactly the same applies to Marks and Spencers summer clothes collection, ideally all of it will be sold at sticker prices and it's the job of the buyers to tweak stock levels to predicted demand.

It's not possible to predict in advance when cheap seats or holidays come on to the market, it's down to demand vs. capacity. If the economy picks up earlier than expected , there may be no sale at all and people who leave it late will have to pay top dollar for a diminishing selection of holidays. That's the story that the tour operators will put out early in the summer in order to instil panic into the market.

You can hang around waiting for a sale but it could rebound on you.

keithclancy

90 days before your intended travel time is generally the sweet spot.

Although with Ryanair it can be anywhere from 90 - 30 days from experience.

GenuineFan

The stressing is over. I couldn't be bothered checking flights every day. The flight we wanted was from Shannon to Faro, for 8 people, I went ahead and just booked it. The flights are limited from Shannon so I felt if people wanted to book them they would and wouldn't be waiting for prices to drop, so I didn't want to get caught. I had my accommodation booked. Delighted now, and don't care whether the prices go up or down. End of story about flight prices.

seanmacc

Depends when and where you're travelling to. If you're going to the US or Asia during the Summer you would want to have booked already as there will be no more sales or reductions at this point. Anything long haul is expensive these days due to airlines cutting a lot of capacity in the last couple of years. Come March there may be a few offers for European flights from Dublin but just bear in mind that you'll only be getting what's left over. The likes of Amsterdam, Paris (CDG), Frankfurt, Rome and Madrid are out of the question if you want anything cheap without booking way in advance because they are hub airports with little flight capacity from Dublin