TravelTalkOnline Forums Travel and Vacation Forums St. Maarten - St. Martin Are You Finding Airfare High for the Fall???

Usually I tend to find the best airfares during this month for the fall and even next spring. Flying out of Detroit is usually $600-650. So you can imagine how shocked I am to see prices at $1008. I have never seen AA do this before. The past two weeks it has creeped up to ridiculous levels. At least Delta is more reasonable at $753 (which is still too high to bite).

With you on this one. We travel in August out of Philadelphia and it seems airfare is up 40-50%. We kept watching and looking to see how many seats were left. The day before my wife was about to bite the bullet and purchase, I checked an old closed credit card for mileage.
I had exactly 50 extra miles left after purchasing 2 business class tickets.
Been watching airfare since purchase and it seems I bought at the lowest mileage. I used 62,500 miles and today it's over 100,00 miles.

Hope it goes down for you.

Just booked the best flights I've had in 15 years - $430 RT direct Boston/SXM for January on JetBlue. It's crazy because I'm also looking for flights to LA in August, and they're through the roof! I miss the days of regulated airlines when the FAA set the prices and the Airlines had to compete based on service! You paid a little more but got decent service and didn't feel like you were constantly getting screwed around.

Great news Tim, however you East coast folks do have access to JetBlue which we Midwest folks do not. No JetBlue savings here out of Detroit.

Ive just booked a very expensive flight to SXM in July Crazy prices from the UK!

Same flight out of CLT to SXM was $624 last year and now $870. The merger of airlines didn't help . Will wait a few more weeks and see what happens for the Nov visit

The merger definitely was not good. I had that same $870 price for a November flight from Baltimore. We ended up spending $130 more per person and we are now flying first both ways. AMERICAN is now approaching Spirit airlines in quality and value. Pretty soon I will start flying Air Yugo if they don't come back to customer service.

The merger of AA and US Air definitely has not been good for air prices to SXM, but I think we all knew that. With regard to 'service', it doesn't really exist in airlines any more. That said, we really have very little to complain about with our recent experiences to SXM on AA. Jet Blue, on the other hand, I have had numerous issues with their website, customer service, etc., etc.

I just looked ours up, and last year we paid $1,080 per ticket, for business class. This year, for the same dates, we're paying $743 each for coach. Business was over $2,000 each when I booked, definitely not worth the extra for a 4 1/2 hour flight.

From St Louis air has been probably $100 more expensive per ticket than past years for our November and Jan/Feb trips.
Hoping Southwest starts flying soon and gives AA some real competition.

We generally book our flights almost as early out as can be done (330 days or there about) and while not planning a Nov/Dec trip this year, I did notice our specific preference in April flights are considerably higher than we generally experience and it doesn't help that we're flying in the Easter timeframe. This is flying out of JFK so if the trend holds, my sympathies to those of you who travel from the Midwest and other less serviced market areas at that time of year.

As for AA, it is still our preferred carrier over JB, but sometimes it just isn't doable because of the seasonal changes of their equipment and routing.

The government agency that regulated airlines was called the Civil Aeronautics Board. The FAA never regulated pricing or routes airlines were able to serve.

We always go to St Martin from mid October to the end of the month. I started watching ticket prices right after the first of the year, and basically checked them every day. We have flown direct flights out of Charlotte every trip we have gone down to the island. Last year during October was when the official merger and conversion of US Air Flights to AA flight numbers occurred. Our flight down was listed as a US air flight, but while down there, the conversion happened, and our flights back were listed as AA. So this year, while searching for the direct flights out of Charlotte, the prices never really fell below $700 per person. I had never paid that much on US Air, even with the higher fuel cost the last few years. I checked the price every day for the first 4 months of the year, as the last few years, it seemed the lowest ticket prices I found came in April. This year, that did not happen. Around March, I also started checking the price out of my local airport. You see, I only lived about 70 miles from Charlotte, so it was never a problem to drive there to catch a direct flight. This year to my surprise, I found a AA flight out of my local airport that connects through Charlotte and actually does the same 2nd leg to St Martin as the direct flight. I only had to pay $596 per person for this. I do have to change planes in Charlotte, but don't have to drive but about 12 miles to catch the first leg of the trip. Not sure what sense this pricing makes, since the cost was so much lower by taking this from my home airport.

Well, if it doesn't sound too much like bragging, our prices came down considerably. Coach fares from SFO run in the 500s r/t, so we booked business for both this June trip and our October trip which were in the 900s.

There is some consolation to our 12 hour red-eye trip.

We booked Denver to SXM round trip for two for $1016 on AA for a 3 week October-November 2016 stay. All taxes and fees included.
We live in Oregon and are using FF miles from Oregon to Denver. The cost of flying United from southern Oregon to Denver was $1500 RT for 2, at the time of booking. Therefore we used FF miles for that segment. Go figure. After working many combinations of flights and airlines, this was our cheapest airfare. As it is, we are overnighting in Charlotte on our way home. We did look at going through SFO, but it was more expensive which is an overnight arriving at midnight at SFO. Then home to Oregon the next day. At least through CLT overnight, we can have a nice dinner, get some sleep, and arrive home at a decent time.
The days of a decent airfare to SXM for many of us, I believe, are gone. You either grin and bear it, or do not go to SXM.

BTW we have been every year since 1997 except for 2000, which was a re-build year after Lenny.

While I tend to agree with you that the good prices of old may be gone, it is what AA is doing that drives me crazy. after posting this yesterday morning and reading what everyone had to say, I looked last night before going to bed and AA had dropped the price from $1008 to $814. So I checked this a.m and guess what .... it is back to $1008 again. This is what is driving me bonkers.

Just bought tickets last night from JetBlue out of Boston for early October, direct flight to SXM, for two adults, round trip. Total: $1575 for Blue Plus, which includes one checked bag per adult.

That is not AA. That is every airline. Prices go up and down and there is no logic whatsoever to it. If you find a good price, book it!!!

Guess I did well then for my JB BOS/SXM Sunday/Sunday N/S's in January (15-29)...$1110 for two Blue Plus R/T's...added the extra room/priority boarding 'cuz I love those seats

Airfare from CLT - SXM in November is the highest I have ever seen it in my five years I've been going. I'm going to hold out through July and if it doesn't drop I will bite.

Got lucky a couple of years ago; price for November trip in 2014 dropped from $700 pp to $420 pp for two days in mid July 2014 and I grabbed it. I'm hoping for something similar this year but not counting on it.

Dustin

Hi Rick, we switched to delta out of grr for 600, but we booked in Feb of this year,hope to see u there

On AA from Nashville to SXM- flying there on Day before Thanksgiving 2016- Price $812 pp- last year in November 2015 it was $780 pp.

Must be a November thing. I check AA for a BOS-CLT-SXM R/T in November and it was $908

..In January same flight on AA is $564 R/T

I admit a larger part of our high airfare is flying out of a regional airport, then to a hub (or several hubs), and on to SXM.

I also agree with Pat, as soon as airfare is available for our time frame, I usually book. I have found earliest fares are the lowest based on our location.

We booked JFK - SXM JetBlue $500 for this November. It's usually $400-$430
Strange thing is I can book JFK - Paris non stop for less than $500

Re: Paris....one of my every other year visiting places BUT with the terror issues, repeated air, train and garbage strikes (now) tourism is down over 15% from previous years sooooo..airfare decreases makes sense

when looking for airfare for 2+ people, it's interesting to first check the fare for only 1 person...airlines only release a few seats at a time at the cheapest fares, so when doing a search for only 1 seat, you might find the last cheap seat available at that time...but when doing a search for 2 seats, instead of showing you the last remaining seat at the lower price + 1 seat at a higher price, the airline will show you both seats at the same higher price

when we booked our tix on AA a few months ago, i wound up buying the last ticket available at the cheapest price, then waiting a couple of days until they released more cheap seats to buy the other ticket...this saved us ~$260/ticket...we were buying 11 months out, and the flights were still pretty empty, so i was confident they would eventually release more cheap seats...the other thing we could have done if we didn't want to wait to buy the second ticket, is buy the one cheap seat, then separately purchase the other seat at the higher price...this would have at least saved us ~$260 on one ticket

We fly out of DTW too, and booked for December a few weeks ago. Decided to make the 3.5 hour drive to Toronto for a $320 Delta fare. It was $780 each out of DTW on both Delta and AA. Fares were also much better out of Buffalo, with both Delta and AA at $420 when we booked.

I think I'd drive 3 1/2 hours too to get half price! Good for you.

We have a great rate going down in October, but coming back to the NYC area in early November has been out of sight to say the least. We may end up in Newark on the way back. (lovely armpit...LOL) Some of the flights are more than two people ONE way!!! As one poster said; Wait until the doors/hotels open up in Cuba. The new slogan for St. Martin will be the deserted island. <img src="http://www.traveltalkonline.com/forums/images/graemlins/duh.gif" alt="" />