I did NOT get the best price this time around, but I am pleased with the flights we got, so it is good enough. Here is the information; you can draw your own conclusions and lessons.
We knew the dates we wanted to travel, and the general location. June and July, in Iceland, the UK and Ireland, then over to France and possibly Switzerland.
On November 22, I found what turned out to be the lowest fare I would see, on IcelandAir's website: $1417 for an open jaw ticket. (See screen shot below.)
Interestingly, at the same time I found this price, the cost of the exact same trip but returning from Zurich was $7300 per ticket.
I was working on various ideas: fly round trip to Iceland and string on a couple one way tickets, or do the trip backwards, forwards or sideways, or pick different cities to fly out of.
While I was doing this the $1417 fare noted above disappeared for good (in December) and went up to about $4500.
The bottom line seemed to be that it was cheapest to fly home out of Zurich, the flight times did not match up too well so I always ended up with an extra day layover, and some of the flights seemed really really long (27 hours). Also, Delta seemed to always be the low price leader, and I am not too hot about them.
I was able to string together a series of fares at a cost of about $1400, but with the above problems.
After pondering this and looking through January, I figured that it was worthwhile looking at buying the tickets as just one, multi-stop trip instead of a bunch of individual flights.
So I plugged in SFO -> KEF, then KEF ->LHR, then return ZRH -> SFO.
I used different dates, and searched on Kayak, Hipmunk, Skyscanner, Fly dot com, Orbitz, Expedia, and CheapTickets.
Prices stayed high, then about two weeks ago dropped to $1600-1800.
I started thinking about how I really need to start planning the trip, the US Air - American merger (less competition) happening, and gas prices going up, and I thought I probably needed to make a purchase.
So yesterday I ran across a price of $1666 (see below) on good airlines, leaving San Jose and connecting through Boston, then returning though Seattle and Oakland.
I found this on CheapTickets.com
The big downside to this is the 19+ hour flight (an eight hour layover in Boston) and the late landing time in Iceland, which effectively eats up two days (Saturday and Sunday) of flying.
The upside is the 10AM departure, which combined with the shorter layover means I arrive in Iceland Sunday morning instead of Sunday night.
Thus, for $100 more per ticket we have shorter layovers, which results in traveling for one day instead of two (we end up gaining an entire day in Iceland).
In effect, for $100.50 more per ticket we have cut our travel time down from two days to one day.
So, rather than just buying, I saved these screen shots and kept the CheapTickets page open, and went back to Kayak, Orbitz, Expedia and Hipmunk, and ran the exact same flights and airports through their search engines.
Sure enough, I ended up with better and worse prices: "Best Offers" from $4800 to $1554.
I was briefly tempted by the $1554 offer on Hipmunk (see below). What I didn't like is that it is on US Airways, with two stops (especially the stop in New York, where your chances of missing a connection are the greatest in the US) and the 6 AM leave time.
Did I get a great deal this year?
No.
Could I have? Yes, in November. Gotta remember that.
But, overall I think I got decent flights, at decent times from a convenient airport for just a little more.
Was it worth the extra $146? For me, yes. But you can decide what you would have done.
SIDE NOTE:
The morning after I bought, I checked the price and it was up $60. Today it is up $100, so I am guessing that it was a good time to buy. I'll check later and see if the prices rise even higher, or if I should have held out.
UPDATE: 25 April, 2013-
We leave in 44 days. I have been checking ticket prices for this trip of and on since I bought the tickets, because I am interested in finding the best time to buy; in getting the best price. Since I bought at $1766 the prices rose and have stayed high. Today the price is $2460 and the flight is similar to what I am taking. So that whole thing about waiting until 30-60 days out from the trip for the best price does not seem to be true.
I will keep checking, right up until we leave.
LAST UPDATE: 15 May, 2013
We leave in 24 days and the best price is still $2460.
My take on it is to look and get a baseline price, early on, then trust your instincts.
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