learning the ropes
 

So i'm learning the ropes and the more I learn the more I get confused

So i'm trying to make it back home to Philly for Christmas but i'm on a major budget. I've looked on ITA and found some in the $3- 400 range. I live in so cal and have looked at all airports in the area ( lax, ont, etc.) can someone share any other tips on finding low fares?

Christmas is of course always tough.

You can set up alerts with various sites - Kayak, Expedia, et al. You'll get an email if there is a price drop.

If you are sure you want to go, probably the best thing to do is just nail some fare in the low 300 range and move on. That is good for the time of year.

You could consider bidding on Priceline. Not a great deal of success with airfare in the recent years, but the attempt is free.

If you are iffy about going, you could wait until later and watch for sales. Flying right on Christmas Day sometimes can be relatively inexpensive. And sort of fun, as the people working are also working at having a bit of the spirit.

Romelle

PS - And have your frequent flyer memberships set up ahead of time so you can start collecting miles.

PPS - Probably somebody here will step in and suggest you sign up for some of the credit cards and accumulate enough miles to get your ticket that way. It can work. You can research the process in the Miles Buzz! forum.

You can check the Philly area airports too. Baltimore, IAD, Allentown. Even NYC.

Xmas is challenging - flexibility is key - hope you are using their flex searches too.

Don't suppose your credit is good enough to sign up for a credit card that gets you a free flight? Or your parents? Signing up for the Southwest card is a great one for two flights.

What are the dates that you want to travel on?

UA's award seats are still pretty wide open for Christmas travel

The Chase UA MileagePlus Explorer ( with the 50K offer ) will get you a roundtrip ticket on any UA flight that are still selling seats, even if it is the last seat on the plane ( using a standard award ).

Is that o/w or r/t ? It can be cheaper to buy r/t, though agree with others that holidays are hard and prices go way up.

With all due respect, that's almost worse. You can go round trip to Europe for 60K miles using̶ s̶t̶a̶n̶d̶a̶r̶d̶ award, er sorry, Saver, what used to be standard award :rolleyes:

Sure, if you really, really want to go, but I don't think I'd spend 50K miles (25K if going one way) to save $300.

EmailKid

The OP said $300-400 is too expensive.

How about signing up for the Southwest Card--50k miles with first purchase? You could fly RT for $99+10. (The annual fee plus ticketing.) SWA has lots of flights between LAX and Philly in late Dec. for around 40k miles. That's how we're doing our Christmas trip this year.

Oops--SWA card has a $1000 min. spend now. Never mind.

Keep watching the fares.

One year when I lived in Oregon and flew back to see my relatives at Christmas, I kept seeing fares of $550 all through October. Going into November, I decided that I had to bite the bullet, so I went into my travel agent and gave her the dates I wanted to fly.

She typed in my information and said, "That will be $198." Then she did a double take and said, "I just booked some people for $550 yesterday."

Her comment at the end of the session was, "I sometimes think they set fares with a dartboard."

Can someone explain what this "travel agent" is?;)

Really, you have some time to wait and search left. So try to search every few days and if you find a price eventually that you're happy with, grab it.

Obviously, flying around Christmas is always a challenge for the budget-minded. If nothing comes up by the beginning of December that you're happy with, you might want to either re-think your trip or, as someone suggested, bite the bullet.