Useful fare deadlines?
 

I seem to have missed a fare this week - a trip I'm considering next month doubled in value (on CO's site) from yesterday to day. We're just over 30 days from the outbound flight, which made me wonder:

Are there reliable rules for knowing if a fare went away and is coming back or if you've just missed it (barring a published fare sale)? That is, are there deadlines after which a fare is likely to go up - 30 days, 2 weeks, whatever?

Sorry to clog the thread - but hopefully an answer would be helpful for us relatively novice FTers.

I've seen deadlines at 3 days, 5 days, 7 days, 10 days, 14 days, 21, 30, 50, etc. Usually these are listed in the fare rules, so it would help to pull those up before deciding to hold off on a purchase.

Really good tool. Thank you.

If you see a good price, buy it now vs waiting. :)

3,7,14, & 21 on intl on occasion or what i consider, but checking the fare rules probably should be done before buying any fare....

Didn't the new laws that just came into effect mandate a 24hr refund period? IE you can purchase a fare and then you have 24 hours to cancel with no penalty?

The laws in your territory may well be different from others.

It is probably as much a function of the yeild management software setting the fares that are available for sale as it is the number of days before the flight. You can't control what the software will do, it's much harder to predict.

I'm in the US...

some quick searching confirmed it, you can now hold a reservation without payment or cancel without penalty for 24 hours.