The bankruptcy of AA may produce some lower price ticket options, flying from Cancun, for those who need to pay a visit home, this spring.
Hopefully that is true although I read just the opposite yesterday. Seems the plan is to cut seats and routes and raise prices. And other airlines Airlines attempt to raise US prices again - Yahoo! News will only use this as an excuse to raise rates--as if they need one. And flying FROM Cancun is almost always more than flying TO Cancun. Time will tell. I bought a flight 2 days ago CUN/Ont late January 2012 and it was the same price before and after AA announced the filing.
Time will tell, Jamie, and Jim may be right: it depends on whether AA needs to boost their cash flow, from time to time, by discounting tickets bought well in advance. Yesterday, we wanted to buy a one way from MIA to CUN, for an afternoon flight, during Easter Week, 2012, and got ours for $77 USD, each. Just for interest, I also looked at Cancun to Madrid, this spring, and saw $657, RT, with AA.
AA sucks, IMHO. Dallas to Cancun and they don't even give you a few peanuts. Continental/United is the way to fly. I got tickets back to Houston on Christmas day using air miles. Round trip only 35,000. And it is a direct flight.
We´re not talkin' peanuts, here, Bruce! AA's bad luck could prove to be our good luck, now and then. Here's another one from an airline that is struggling, and may need a little injection of cash, from time to time: BA is not often very competitive, but had the best one way fares for two legs of a summer trip we booked, recently, for travel in July and August, 2012, beating even Easy Jet, and Ryan Air!
Fare alert Taking advantage of a company's need for a quick infusion of cash probably requires daily checking, or setting a "fare alert" on your favorite website. My wife said the discount on the AA tickets she bought was only up for one day; then, returned to a price level almost three times higher, making her very happy she caught it! One of the things that sensitized me to watching troubled airlines was what happened in the early 90s with Pan Am: after they went into bankruptcy, they posted some pretty amazing deals before they decided to liquidate. BA suffered large losses last quarter, so they may feel a need to boost their cash flow in the short run, by discounting some tickets for travel many months hence, such as ours for July-August 2012 travel.
I haven't seen any change in BA prices myself to London. Where are you flying to? and what sort of price difference was it?
I flew recently CUN-MIA-MCO round trip using only 25,000 miles on AA. Great flights. Got an AA email saying our miles were safe. I am mostly a Jet Blue guy now as they go non stop to MCO and JFK, my normal and frequent destinations. Jet Blue so rocks. Free booze if you have their Amex card and great snacks and sodas are always free for everyone. Nothing like an Absolut Bloody Mary on an 8 am flight to get pumped up for the day.
