One fine city to another fine city.

April 19, 2008 11:36 AM

What's a reasonable price for a round-trip ticket from BWI (or maybe DC, either Dulles or National) to Glasgow, UK, in September of this year?

I'm looking to buy a round trip airline ticket from BWI (or Dulles or National) to Glasgow, UK. Timeframe: Late September. The current best prices I'm finding are ~$887, including taxes and fees etc. (~$700 without taxes and fees.) It's a long time since I've made this journey, and I'm not really in touch with what's a reasonable price and what isn't. Are the prices likely to drop significantly if I wait to buy a ticket?

I don't expect anyone to go to any special effort to find better deals; answers along the lines of "yeah, that's not a bad price" or "wait until closer the time, the price should drop significantly" are fine.

posted by buxtonbluecat to travel & transportation (3 comments total)

My gut feeling? You're not likely to get much lower than that.

You're dealing with the combination of a weak dollar and high fuel prices, and even if you buy now, there's the possibility of a surcharge should that trend continue over the summer. (Here's a nice general trend graph.) The Farecast blog also wonders if Open Skies and slack demand in the early peak season might bring some discounting; still, that's going to affect the more competitive routes first and may not carry over past the summer.

(There used to be nice deals with Iceland Air from BWI to Glasgow involving a stopover in Keflavik, but they pulled that route at the end of 2007.)
posted by holgate at 12:04 PM on April 19

(holgate, thanks for that, lest I try to book it. The GLA-BWI link was sweet; browse the frozen fish and "Local Artist" Björk CDs at Keflavik, hop the Atlantic, pick up the light rail at BWI, and hike over to see my honey in SoWeBo.)
posted by scruss at 3:56 PM on April 19

Seconding holgate- you're contending with both our falling dollar (new lows last week) and astronomical fuel prices. The (domestic) routes that I routinely fly have increased between 15-30% since this time last year. I'd buy as soon as possible; I think prices will only increase over the summer, both because it is summer and because of the other factors affecting the market.

Finally, this month has seen some pretty major changes in the domestic air market in the states: Aloha, Skybus, and ATA are out of business, Frontier declared bankrupcy, and Delta and Northwest are merging. Prices are only on the upswing. My take on it is: buy now or regret it in a few months.
posted by arnicae at 6:09 PM on April 19