Originally Posted by
mahasamatman
That's an urban myth. In my experience, I almost always get better prices booking early. I monitor prices, and see price drops less than 5% of the time.
And in my experience, I almost never get better prices booking early, to the point where I've mostly stopped looking. And clearly OP is seeing the same thing -- as are the number of other people who post something similar every couple of weeks. Whatever routes you're flying, keep flying them.
But it's certainly not an "urban myth" that the sweet spot for pricing is somewhere between ~3 months and ~3 weeks prior to departure. UA does everything it can to make it difficult to predict that, of course, but it's a good starting point.
Originally Posted by
mahasamatman
With no more change fees, there's little to no reason to take the risk unless you have cash flow problems.
I don't choose to loan UA money at 0% interest in fear of some future price increase.