Another flying question - flights to SoCal

sm23 · May 2011

Has anyone flown to SoCal recently? Seems like flights there from Oakland have gotten wayyyyy more expensive! The cheapest I could find for my July trip to Orange County is $200! That's more than it costs me to fly to Seattle to see my parents :-/ What's up with that?

Any travel-savvy nesties have ideas on how to get a better deal?

Dragonfly_Bride · May 2011

You're going in the high season to one of the most popular places in California, if not the country (Disneyland territory). You can get lower fares if you're flexible with your dates, or with your airports. LAX and Long Beach will be cheaper, but you have to see if that's worth the convenience trade-off. I use http://matrix.itasoftware.com for most of my research (and then southwest.com since they only list their flights on their own website). You can do a best-fare month-long search, or a search with multiple airports, or any combination.

rori11 · May 2011

Look to adjust your flight times too. I fly down there quite a bit and can get cheaper flights if I fly out of Oakland late (take the 9pm flight) and then fly out of Orange County early (8am or before).

sm23 · May 2011

Sigh. Yeah I guess I've picked the worst possible time of year to fly. Unfortunately since it's only a short weekend trip, I'm trying to maximize my time there without taking a lot of time off from work. So I'm flying in Friday morning and then back home Sunday night. I suppose I could move the date... but then my best friend might kill me for delaying the trip even more than I already have :-/ Guess I just have to bite the bullet.

Kaz0918 · June 2011

I just got back from a weekend in San Diego and found that it's getting cheaper to fly from SFO. Since Virgin is launching it's new terminal it has tons of flights and sometimes at pretty good prices. They're doing some promotions right now as well. Also American Airlines is pulling out of all of the on line booking agencies (Orbitz, Travelocity, etc) and only allowing you to book directly from the AA website. I've seen some lower prices there as well. HTH!

Mrs.BoomBoom · June 2011

Southwest often has sales (we fly them a lot so we book, and then re-book if the price goes down...book one ways so you can take advantage of a price one way without losing the other.) Subscribe to Ding and stalk their site. Also, think about SFO. Virgin flies from there and we've seen some better deals there.

sm23 · June 2011

Thanks for the ideas ladies. Unfortunately the flights from SFO/through Virgin aren't any cheaper for the dates I'm looking at. I think it's just the time of year and days I have to go. Next year I'll try not to plan for July!

Mrs.BoomBoom · June 2011

sm23:
Thanks for the ideas ladies. Unfortunately the flights from SFO/through Virgin aren't any cheaper for the dates I'm looking at. I think it's just the time of year and days I have to go. Next year I'll try not to plan for July!

Make sure you check SFO for SWA too!

sm23 · June 2011

Mrs.BoomBoom:
sm23:
Thanks for the ideas ladies. Unfortunately the flights from SFO/through Virgin aren't any cheaper for the dates I'm looking at. I think it's just the time of year and days I have to go. Next year I'll try not to plan for July!
Make sure you check SFO for SWA too!

Thanks, but still not cheaper... :-/

Another flying question - flights to SoCal

Re: Another flying question - flights to SoCal

Choose Another Board

Search Boards