V-Flyer

All,
I'm looking at booking flights to MCO from 3rd to 18th Jan 2014 but it seems no 2014 flights are available yet.
Would anyone know when those will be released ?
Many thanks in advance !
Julmops

Flights usually become available about 336 days / eleven months prior to departure. January 2014 flights will start to become available from early February.

Thanks Slinky !

julmops wrote:All,
I'm looking at booking flights to MCO from 3rd to 18th Jan 2014 but it seems no 2014 flights are available yet.
Would anyone know when those will be released ?
Many thanks in advance !
Julmops

Sorry to hijack the thread but the original query was answered. I'm intrigued as to why anyone would nowadays be intested in booking fares as soon as they come out. The only advantage I can think of was in the past you could immediately request (reserve) a seat so if you absolutely had to have a particular seat booking as soon as tickets become available would seem obvious. Now though you can't. The negatives I can think of are 1) you might miss out on a sale fare 2) VS have your money very early.

Note I'm not having a go/poking fun - I'm genuinely interested.

McMaddog wrote:

julmops wrote:All,
I'm looking at booking flights to MCO from 3rd to 18th Jan 2014 but it seems no 2014 flights are available yet.
Would anyone know when those will be released ?
Many thanks in advance !
Julmops

Sorry to hijack the thread but the original query was answered. I'm intrigued as to why anyone would nowadays be intested in booking fares as soon as they come out. The only advantage I can think of was in the past you could immediately request (reserve) a seat so if you absolutely had to have a particular seat booking as soon as tickets become available would seem obvious. Now though you can't. The negatives I can think of are 1) you might miss out on a sale fare 2) VS have your money very early.

Note I'm not having a go/poking fun - I'm genuinely interested.

Because you have no flexibility on the dates? I am in this position for a trip we want to take at Christmas.

For me, it's a matter of budgeting and being generally over-organised.
Whatever is booked and paid for is out of the way.
Furthermore, in this case, I need to be in Orlando on Jan 3rd 2014 as my cruise leave on the 4th from Port Canaveral.

One good reason to look early, if you're on a budget, is that usually the lower fare classes are all available. On popular routes / dates these can get snapped up quickly leaving only more expensive fare classes available.

Then there's always a lot of fun to be had in planning, booking, the anticipating a trip.

Slinky, you even summarized better than me my ways of looking at booking my hols !

There are still many industries where the staff are allocated their holidays well in advance.

A friend of mine is a bus driver and his rota is known a year ahead. Yes there can be swaps allowed but there is often little flexibility that so many of us are used too when it comes to arranging holidays.

For some of those they need to get it booked early to protect the time off.

from my own experience I have found for the first week or two that the fares come live/ bookable , they are heavily inflated in price. Even when you know the exact dates you require I’d suggest holding back well over a fortnight.
We have caught the cruise bug, must be an age related thing and our dates are always fixed (being a wheelchair user we have to book the ship quite a bit ahead to guarantee one of the few the accessible cabins...they remain even in 2013 as rare as Rocking horse poo!!!!). Obviously then there is a huge pressure to tie in the flights but we play the game of bluff with the VS booking team...... checking every day until that familiar dip in price and actually we’ve not missed or dipped out price wise even when the sales are on

Cloudscudder

Yes, I thought that the very lowest buckets aren't always released initially?

we recently booked our next flights to MCO and though it was not in the sale period, they have come out cheaper and VS also priced match ebooker which were coming out £20.00 each cheaper on the day. I am more than happy to be corrected but from my past experiences the first sale tends to be the best price wise even if more sales follow!

Cloudscudder

Cloudscudder wrote:I am more than happy to be corrected but from my past experiences the first sale tends to be the best price wise even if more sales follow!

That might be generally true (I don't know!) -- but it certainly wasn't the case last summer when VS had the mega UC sale, with incredibly cheap fares appearing out of (apparently) nowhere.