Have two trips planned this fall:

Rhine River Cruise in September (this has all been paid for)

Orlando in October. Location set and paid. Still looking at flights.

Does anyone (travel agents) have any feel for what will happen in the next few months about ticket prices? Looking at about $700/person on United.

I know this is all about fuel prices. Which means it's all about the Straight of Hormuz.

Buy now? Roll the dice and wait?

Opinions, please.

Not a travel agent, but those are still aways off.
I would start looking about mid July for the September flight.... I would also look in pronounce mode on the browser and from a internet that was not my home as I've found even with pron mode the websites are seeing the IP address a search was coming from (at least for ads)... so if they are tracking you are looking at flights the more you check the more they might charge.
And if the6 xan find a way to link that you have already booked everything but the flight, they know you will have to book a flight and can charge more as well.

I've got $300 in United flight vouchers so, I'm kinda locked in with them for this trip.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/01/opinion/summer-travel-planes.html

Yeah just like with the pandemic, the prices have risen steadily but people have continued paying. So even when the whole Iran thing is over, they'll leave the prices higher. It won't reset.

Am I the only one who has found prices to be far more reasonable than I thought they were going to be? I got a roundtrip ticket from Bangkok to Houston for Thanksgiving weekend for $850 on Untied and a roundtrip flight from Bangkok to Rome for $600 in October on Qatar Airways.

Fares are absurd right now. Business class to Europe on United is $7700 for my dates. That's not happening. My Vegas flight last week with Economy Plus was over $800.

I definitely have clients holding off but it really is a gamble. Clients on a Disney cruise are still holding out but flight prices keep increasing for their October dates. Even the standard Cancun flights have gone up and with less flight availability.

I agree with the above - if it's a price willing to pay I would probably go ahead and book it. Some airlines will get a future travel credit if prices drop.

We have decided to make it a National Park year and do a lot of 4 or 5 day motorcycle trips this year. Flights for where we want to go are up over 20% or more, so we will wait. We only lack around 7 NPs till we have seen them all, so we are going to try and finish off the list this year and next.

Use the hopper app and set alerts for your trip time.

Agreed. Flight prices are ridiculous.

Jet-A not going down anytime soon with global supply chains in disruption. Airfares are going to reflect that.

My wife and I decided to take two weeks off for Thanksgiving and just rent a GMC Yukon Denali (or similar) and take a road trip to her brother's house in North Carolina instead of flying. It will cost us about the same as a flight by the time you figure in hotels, meals, and gas, but we'll take our time and the scenic route and just make it a fun trip instead of flying up for 4 days.

United can also be stupid expensive. I regularly see their fares being 50% or more higher than competitors. Seen flights to London that are $2200 on BA and $4000 on United in PE. I've found United's international PE and J fares are reasonable way in advance and within a a month of departure, but if I look 1 - 6 months in advance they're stupid expensive.

Aggie71013 said:

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United can also be stupid expensive. I regularly see their fares being 50% or more higher than competitors. Seen flights to London that are $2200 on BA and $4000 on United in PE. I've found United's international PE and J fares are reasonable way in advance and within a a month of departure, but if I look 1 - 6 months in advance they're stupid expensive.

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Agreed. And don't get me started on one-way flights to Europe. Better to book roundtrip and cancel the return flight.

I plan on looking at other carriers. I have points from my Chase Sapphire Reserve but have never used them and need to try and figure out how to. Hubs is a big United guy but might have to fly another airline at the current costs. Honestly if they don't drop I won't go. Even Premium Economy was over $4k.

We recently (Feb purchase for a late May flight) snagged a good premium plus cabin fare with United to LHR, but it was only a good deal if we only upgraded on the outbound flight and took economy on the return. The premium cabin wound up only being a little more expensive than an exit row or bulkhead seat. It was about $1750 (r/t) for the upgrade instead of around $1250 or $1300. R/T in the premium plus cabin was something like $3500.

We put in for a points upgrade on the flight home. Will find out if we get it when we fly home on Friday.

The compromise was ok because it's really on the outbound flight to Europe that I want/need the extra room. I can suffer on the flight home (although, it's gonna be hard to sit in the poor seats again).

The exit/bulkhead row seats on international flights have gotten stupid expensive. $300 each way for a little extra leg room in economy is nuts. And on most of the international flights I've taken the last couple of years, no one has been sitting in them.

I upgraded to the premium plus cabin on a flight from MXP to ORD a few years ago - the bulkhead row was $250 and the premier cabin was $299. That was a no-brainer.

Edited to add we were all upgraded to premium on the LHR to IAH when we got to the airport. The premium cabin was probably only about 1/2 full when we checked in for the flight. BF got the aisle bulkhead and his son and I got middle seats on the back row. I wouldn't have booked these seats, but the my are still better than any seat in economy. All for about $1750 r/t. Upgrade was 20k points pp.