How To: Finding Cheap Airfare

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boy are my arms tired: May 10, 2012; Ham Wrangler

Hi! Wasn't sure if this was the place to ask, but it is, so here we go:

I'm trying to secure tickets to KIX (Kansai International Airport // Osaka, Japan) for myself and my mother from DTW (Detroit) this winter, from December 11th to January 3rd. The dates are flexible, airlines are flexible (I have about 36,500 miles with Delta's Gold Card thing, but apparently I need 250k miles to afford a ticket :v:

not sure if that affects anything).

I've been watching prices like a hawk, but they all seem to hover around about 1700 to 1800 per person round trip. I went by myself last year and got a ticket for about 1350, and had my fiance fly over from there to here for about 1550 this past summer.

My question is, even though there's no real pattern or rule to buying tickets, is there a possibility it'll drop down to 1300/1400 before December 11th? I keep the IPA matrix site open at all times and refresh the search about once every two hours, but haven't seen it go lower (only higher) and I'm afraid if I don't buy now the prices won't get better.

Thanks again for this thread, it's been really helpful.

# ¿ Sep 14, 2013 18:38

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# ¿ May 4, 2024 01:25

boy are my arms tired: May 10, 2012; Ham Wrangler

Mackieman posted:

It is absolutely the correct place to ask.

You're right in that tickets to KIX out of DTW are hovering in the $1500 to $1700 range. Flights to NRT are not much cheaper and then you have to deal with the cost of getting to KIX via another flight or train from there, thus negating any savings.

What I would do in your shoes is look at booking two tickets, one to get you to the west coast and then one for the TPAC flights. This does create what is called an unprotected connection, in that you have two separate tickets so the airline doesn't hold responsibility from getting you from start to finish per their Contract of Carriage, but if you book a wide enough connecting window, you'll be fine.

Assuming you're interested in going that route, you can do LAX-HND-KIX on the way out and KIX-SFO-LAX on the way back for $902 round trip. You then have to get from DTW (or a nearby airport like FNT) to LAX at a price point that makes it worth it to go this route. Currently I see FNT-ORD-LAX on AA and then LAX-DEN-DTW on F9 (Frontier) for $374, which brings you to a grand total of $1275 for the trip, saving you a couple hundred bucks over the DTW-KIX market fare.

The DTW-LAX fares are far more likely to change by a significant amount than DTW-KIX is, so you could ostensibly gamble with the domestic leg and see if the price drops a decent amount to save more while going ahead and securing the $902 TPAC fare immediately. The value of that depends entirely on your risk appetite.

Edit: Doh, forgot dates. That was 12/8-12/31.

I hadn't even considered doing the split route thing. This makes it much more manageable, thank you for the quick reply!

# ¿ Sep 14, 2013 19:03

boy are my arms tired: May 10, 2012; Ham Wrangler

Nice Davis posted:

e: Also, what is a more disappointing way to follow up the wonderful experience of taking Japanese trains: taking Amtrak, or driving on the interstate? Neither comes close to measuring up to the shinkansen.

Both are pretty depressing. :smith:

I actually managed to secure a flight from LAX to KIX connecting through Narita for 1,050, which wasn't bad at all and fit our dates perfectly (despite not being cheapest, turns out our dates weren't as flexible as we thought). We're eyeing tickets to LAX now, and I've seen them drop really low before so I'm fairly confident I got a cheaper deal then just buying a direct DTW-KIX flight. Thanks everyone, again!

# ¿ Sep 16, 2013 05:59

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