Airfare flash sales: More frustration than they are worth?
Only a few days ago, JetBlue announced a fare sale for flights between Newark and Boston, with fares of only $9 each way. The sale itself lasted only one day, and was for flights on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays during part of May and part of June. If you were lucky enough to get one of these fares you’d end up paying $39 including all taxes and fees, which really is a fantastic price, but how valuable are these “flash” fare sales really?
Cheaper than buying real advertising
We do love JetBlue and wouldn’t hesitate to fly them if they had a competitive price on a route we wanted to take, but still this sale feels just a bit sleezy. The point of it was purely to publicize this brand new route of theirs, and so many travel sections of newspaper and even quite a few travel blogs have so little real “news” to report that they’d obviously jump on it.
And jump they did. On that day it was announced everywhere you’d look, even though the chances of any given consumer being able to take advantage of it were almost zero. For one thing, you can take a train from Newark to Boston in about the same about of time it takes to go through security and wait for your flight and whatnot, so this route is a bit frivolous to begin with.
The problems with flash sales
Several airlines have these sorts of instant sales each week, usually announced on Twitter, Facebook, or both. You’ll see an announcement that flights from, say, Long Beach to Las Vegas are only $39 each way. Even if you live in one of those cities, the schedule is so limited and you have to act so quickly to take advantage of it that it’s hardly worth the trouble.
Perhaps if you are retired and looking to just get out of town whenever possible it could work, and in the case of Las Vegas you can actually find hotel rooms for around $20 per night during the week, but still, for most people the trip is going to cost many hundreds of dollars regardless.
This is one of those situations where the temptation to take advantage of a “bargain” might actually end up being a curse. It’s a bit like driving 10 miles across town to save 3 cents per gallon on gasoline. By conforming your own trip to save $80 on flights you will almost certainly end up going and coming back on dates you’d probably not choose otherwise. And you might even end up going to a city that you wouldn’t have visited otherwise. Serendipity can be fun, but maybe not when it’s forced on you by an airline sale.
Is there a better way?
There really isn’t much harm in keeping track of these flash sales, and if that tiny chance comes up for a sale that actually goes somewhere you want to go at a time you want to go, then sure, go for it. Otherwise you are really better off trying to plan as early as possible. We’ve previously discussed that it’s best to buy air tickets early, but not too early. The tested wisdom is to start looking for a price drop about 8 weeks before you want to go, and make sure you lock in a ticket by the 2 weeks before leaving mark. If you are traveling on a big holiday you are best off buying as early as possible period.