Always Procrastinate.

I really felt that I had learned my lesson about eight years ago when my wife and I, after waiting until the week before Christmas, got excellent fares on Swiss Air for a ten day trip to Spain. The lesson? Always procrastinate; do not buy today that ticket which you could buy instead tomorrow.

Last Tuesday night, I spent the hours from 11pm to to 2am with several browser windows open to kayak.com and Orbitz, on the basis that airlines generally release unsold seats in lower-fare classes between midnight and 1am on Wednesday morning (in their local timezone). During that period the price didn't budge, and I finally booked four flights for our upcoming vacation at $468 each.

This morning, almost identical flights were available on Northwest for $380. True, Northwest is running out of pilot hours at the end of each month which might have cast doubt on our August 27th return flight, but still!