Do Australian domestic air tickets increase in price close to departure date?
According to Google Flights, there are reasonably priced (~100 USD) tickets from Sydney to Melbourne (roundtrip) for all dates, including a couple of days from now. Is it typical? I plan to fly in August and I'm trying to work out if I need to buy the tickets now to guarantee a good price, or if I can wait until nearer the date I plan to fly.
I don't think this is a duplicate because I'm asking about pricing trends specifically for domestic flights in Australia (because apparently [according to Google Flights] they are different from those in the US).
Best Answer
Flight prices, especially those between the major eastern capitals (Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne), are pretty stable in Australia.
In general there are two pricing tiers used by Australian airlines - the "deals" and the standard. There's a certain number in the deal bucket and everything else goes into the standard bucket.
If there are available tickets in the cheaper bucket it's worth booking ASAP. If there's none left the standard flight prices don't tend to increase significantly. Indeed you'll find prices vary more significantly across the day rather than between days - first thing in the morning is the cheapest.
If you monitor the prices you might get cheaper sale prices if you're flying off peak times (no weeknights, no weekends) but the difference often isn't more than the difference between the "deal" and "standard" options.
Pictures about "Do Australian domestic air tickets increase in price close to departure date?"
Do flight prices go up closer to departure date?
Specifically, plane tickets usually don't get cheaper closer to the departure date. Instead, flights tend to be the most inexpensive when you book between four months and three weeks before your departure date. According to the CheapAir.com 2019 Annual Airfare Study, you can expect rates to go up after that period.Why are plane tickets more expensive closer to departure?
Flights do generally get more expensive the closer you get to flight time. This is because seats at the lowest fare levels sell out as a flight receives more and more bookings.Do flight prices go up the more you search?
Surprisingly, there is very little evidence that online travel sites are raising prices the more that you search for a specific trip. In fact, they tend to show lower prices to logged-in users.Do flight prices change all the time?
2. Re: Do flight prices fluctuate all the time? The simple answer to your basic question is Yes and sometimes in a matter of a few minutes. Best option is to set a price you're comfortable with and when you see tickets at or below that price, purchase them and don't look back.HOW TO FIND CHEAP FLIGHTS - My Best Tips After Booking 500+ Flights
More answers regarding do Australian domestic air tickets increase in price close to departure date?
Answer 2
Yes, prices for Australian domestic flights tend to increase as the departure date approaches. You can trivially confirm this with a local booking engine like Webjet, and here's a snapshot of their best available SYD-MEL fares for the next few weeks:
Note how all flights in the next 4 days are >$220, the following 4 are in the $150-200 range, and only beyond that do you see any flights in the sub-$100 range.
Also, there's nothing particularly Australian about this phenomenon, it applies to all modern airline pricing. See this epic answer for much more detail.
Sources: Stack Exchange - This article follows the attribution requirements of Stack Exchange and is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
Images: Andres Ayrton, Helena Lopes, Erik Mclean, Alex Green