I am looking at booking a flight from Europe to Washington on UA in late July/early August. The prices used to be cheaper, but now they have increased. Is there any chance that they will decrease?

Of course. Sometimes you'll find two or three different prices in the same day. July/August is prime vacation time, so if the seats are dwindling, then revenue management may be happy, and prices only going up.

However, it should be noted that the prices for a given date in a peak period will typically only go up as available seats diminish. If you pick later dates for the same route, you will find lower prices.

There may be lower prices as the target date approaches, if there is a greater number of empty seats than expected. Last minute travel sites specialize in these. I wouldn't hold your breath on cheap last minute tickets on popular routes at peak season, however.

Happened to me this week. I booked on Delta SFO-DTW-DAY round trip for Jul 2-3, the cheapest ticket was a K fare for $577. Booked it one week ago. On Monday they released a bunch of T inventory for $278.

It's a work trip, so at least it's no loss out of my own pocket but fares did go down. Just searched again today, and now I'm even more unhappy because they are selling a Q fare now for the exact same price I paid for a K fare. Q would put me higher on the upgrade priority list... grrr.

For peak-season travel, especially closing in on the travel dates, I usually don't see fares drop again.

If it's about 3-4 months out, and it's not a particularly high demand route/date, then I see fares bounce around a bit, subject to various airline promotions and other carriers matching them.

What I tend to do there is watch all of the flights for a given day and take note of whether most or all of them are offering seats in the lowest fare bucket. If they are, then I wait around for a fare sale and usually get one. (I tend to do this on routes I know, so I kind of know what the typical Southwest or Frontier promo fare will be and whether my preferred legacies tend to match.) Just booked a fall ORD trip a couple weeks ago...it had been showing as $200 R/T from MCI for all fall dates (a historically high fare) and dropped to $99 R/T (a more typical off-peak promo fare, initiated by WN and matched by AA a day later).

It's when you see most of your possible itineraries start selling into higher fare buckets that you know you need to make a decision. Then, even if a competitor runs a promotion on that exact route, your desired flights probably won't change at all. Those $49 each way seats I booked were only available on the flights that had the $100 each way fare before. A different flight that was at $152 (an insanely high fare on this route) remained at $152 during the promotion.

imho, probably less chance of a drop if you are flying on weekends, like sat out-sun back....the typical vacation sked....

The president has no control on the price of oil sold on the international market. There is no shortage in oil production we exported more oil than we produced in 2011.

Lolwut?

back on topic, sorta.....

i would look at the prices each week from now to the latest time you can go & see what the prices are....it might show a trend....

madoff taught us how to do it!

For what it's worth, there are some options out there in the $1150 R/T range, which isn't really an abnormal summer fare.

My assumptions:
- "Europe" = FRA. (Hey, I had to guess something...)
- "UA" = any Star Alliance metal
- "Washington" = anything from Philly to Baltimore to Northern Virginia
- "late July early August" = a one-week R/T anywhere in those 3 weeks

Nonstop United metal to IAD is more like $1,600. A little on the high side for my tastes...but I doubt it decreases between now and then.