Fare publishing schedule
 

I don't pay attention to NW fares (only *A), but I am looking for cheap flights for some friends who prefer NW. Particularly, I am looking for fares during the last 2 weeks of July. When I search with flexible travel dates on Travelocity, many of the NW fares have a latest travel date of June 8th, if any. It seems to be that way for fares from several different cities I checked (GSP, NYC, BOS, FLL).

Does anyone know when they will start publishing fares that will cover through the end of July? I realize that some of the fares currently published don't have a latest travel date, but I'm just trying to estimate when the fares with a date would be published to wait and see if those might be cheaper. Hopefully you NW gurus know the answer.

Thanks.

Sorry, just bumping up the visibility of the thread since there are 0 replies.

I don't know if there's a hard answer to your question, but it probably does pay to wait if most of the fares end on June 8. I've found that 60-90 days out is usually a good time to start really looking for fares on NW.

I think your problem is with Travelocity, not Northwest. You can purchase tickets on Northwest 350+ days in advance on their website. I already have tickets into July, so there are fares out there. I have not had much success using Travelocity with Northwest, not sure why.

Domestic ticket prices for this summer are relatively good from the Midwest, I imagine ticket prices will only increase.

NW publishes fares 330 (or however many) days in advance. But, like most airlines, they often don't publish their full range of fares for a given date until about 60-90 days out.

For example, if you search NYC-SMF right now on Travelocity, you'll see that the cheapest fares on NW, F9, and TZ are only good through 24May or 14Jun. Chances are, similar fares will appear in a few weeks for late-June/early-July.

But there never is a guarantee.

It's not just a NW thing. Do a flexible search with your city pair. You will bring up all the fares for all airlines in Travelocity. This display will show you the end dates and restrictions on all of the fares.

Thanks for the responses! I guess I'll hold out for a bit and be optimistic.

sidestep.com
 

Try sidestep.com.
I have used them several times in the last couple of years instead of nwa.com and they are usually cheaper than nwa.com.
I try to fly NW for two reasons: 1) they are in my backyard and 2) as a former employee I still know plenty of employees at NW who will op-up me if there is room up front.
Last Monday I booked 3 tickets to BRU leaving end of September and returning middle of October for $537 all in on sidestep.com when nwa.com was $630 plus taxes for the same travel dates.

Edited to add: Sometimes the carrier listed will show "major carrier".
Just click on it to see who the airline is.