TravelTalkOnline Forums Travel and Vacation Forums St. Maarten - St. Martin What's up with flight prices

Can't seem to find anything under $800 from Indianapolis. We normally spend anywhere from $500 to high $600's. Crazy prices right now. Not sure we will be going to SXM this fall at these prices.

Best to book earlier for better pricing. Closer you get to departure the more expensive they are. We always book 10-11 months out.

For us!!! the closer to travel, the cheaper the price... I think they try to sell the higher priced seats and then what ever they do not sell they lower the price.. Of cource we are able to go out of jfk direct and use jet blue, not sure about others... have booked a month before we want to travel, and have gotten great prices. Of cource each day of the week is different, and we can pick which ever is the cheapest as we have a place on Island. Some people can only travel weekends. I assume we are lucky that way...

It is called flying from the mid-west. Not many good fares, almost always a connection or two and little choice of carrier.

You are lucky that you are able to fly out of JFK nonstop. Prices out of NY are always MUCH less than anywhere else. Prices from Miami are way over $700.

Same way for us on the West coast.

Guess I shall not complain about the 2 hour ride to jfk and the two hour before flight wasting time in airport... Really hate travel day there and back, but given what others have to deal with!!!! were ok... Not sure I understand why so high from Fl? I almost understand the Midwest and west coast. Florida is closer to St.M. or am I loosing it... We end up usally paying non stop round trip under 600 per ticket and that's January.. Much less off season...

Get the Skiplagged app and see on bottom of page trends when the prices go up and down. I set an alert recently for anything under $400 and it alerted me. I bought 6 tickets for $380 each from Baltimore to SXM. Can't wait to get there for trip #7.

Being a few hundred miles closer has very little to do with the actual fare.

The airlines know that people living in Florida are wealthy so they charge them more to travel and give the lower prices to the less fortunate in the EAST! <img src="http://www.traveltalkonline.com/forums/images/graemlins/jester.gif" alt="" />

If they were wealthy they wouldn't be living in FLA but in SXM <img src="http://www.traveltalkonline.com/forums/images/graemlins/jester.gif" alt="" />

Fly out of Toronto, direct to SXM for $250 US in September through November.

I booked Buis class on United in April $2200. coach was $1100. My ticket droped $621 got refund from united dj <img src="http://www.traveltalkonline.com/forums/images/graemlins/usflag.gif" alt="" />

united??????????? wonder why...

Tell me about it. We usually pay around $450 or so for a N/S, R/T from JFK. So far the cheapest fare for this itinerary is $968 with the most expensive being $1200. I'm waiting for a reasonable fare before we buy.

2 weeks ago I booked Jet Blue nonstop from JFK $390 RT for travel in the beginning of June. We used to pull the trigger at $500 so not bad.

One reason is that airlines like Allegiance offer dirt cheap flights to Florida from lots of locations. Many people assume that they can get a real deal to SXM and other Caribbean destinations from Florida. Nope.

Haaaa you are funny. I live in Florida and by no means am I rich. I am retired after 21 years in law enforcement and my annual pension is $35k. Oh that's before my $1,440 per month for health insurance which is why my better half still works full time and I have a part time job. Annual gross income for both of us in last 25 years has never reached 6 figures. For me to save enough to afford my $781 per person airfare plus all the other expenses has taken me over a year. I guess I take offense to your comment since we have a lot of Canadian snowbirds here in Sarasota who either fill up an RV resort called Sun N Fun with their $200,000 (US) motor coaches or have a condo/house and we wonder how they can afford two homes when us Floridians can barely afford one.

deputy--Lighten up a little. I think that Elizabeth was making that statement tongue in cheek...

Yes Carol, it was only directed at you as a joke, I guess some folks don't pay any attention to the symbols at the end of the posts. After having lived in Florida for a few years, I certainly do know that all people living there are not wealthy! <img src="http://www.traveltalkonline.com/forums/images/graemlins/Yikes.gif" alt="" />

We booked our flight 2 weeks ago with WestJet for January & yesterday the same seats were $400 each more round trip. That's big. We have found with WestJet the price doesn't drop much the closer the trip becomes. Although it is nice to have lower fares but we are happy to be able to go. <img src="http://www.traveltalkonline.com/forums/images/graemlins/Clapping.gif" alt="" />

Checked the prices from MSY (New Orleans) to SXM for Aug 2017, and the cheapest was $827 per person. That's about $300 more than we have ever paid. <img src="http://www.traveltalkonline.com/forums/images/graemlins/Yikes.gif" alt="" />

When checking tickets, you need to check daily.. I know for us, prices change a lot... I try to go in every day, or every other day. Be surprised how much the fares change... Bottom line. do not buy so quickly, check frequently...

We live in Seattle and it's quite a feat to get to SXM. We always overnight in Miami. For the last 15 years the fare has basically remained the same (around $800)and we always book in April for the October trip. I have had people in the travel industry ask me the best way to book this trip as it can be very confusing.

We have been taking the red eye out of SEA for a direct to clt to sxm. Leaves at 10pm and gets to sxm 11:30am. Slick.

American, US Air merger, enough said!

AA has always come through for us even after the merger.

Agreed, less competition, higher prices!!

Amen that, fer sure!!

I am waiting for the JB schedule to extend a bit so we can book our mid-January trip. I did notice that AA has a R/T one stop flight with decent times for $357 (BOS) which is a steal...but..I just don't trust them to actually keep that flight and not change it to some bizarre connection fiasco.

SO it's not the price with AA..it lack of confidence.

I fly from NYC to SXM direct and we paid $390.00 roundtrip last year, at the moment direct flights are as high as 600 to 700 dollars,
hoping they drop soon!

Airline prices vary widely based on day of the week, time of year, number of stops and of course, the particular market you're booking in.

IMHO, $390.00 for almost anytime of year is a reasonably good price for JFK to SXM for a n/s flight. We've had lower and we've had higher but I usually set my benchmark price at $450.00 pp r/t and go from there. I was quite surprised to see both the AA and JB pricing for our next trip dates in November and thought the numbers higher than previous years but that said, we didn't go to SXM last November so perhaps I'm mistaken. <img src="http://www.traveltalkonline.com/forums/images/graemlins/handshake.gif" alt="" /> <img src="http://www.traveltalkonline.com/forums/images/graemlins/handshake.gif" alt="" />

Jet Blue releases their next schedule June 4

prices can change daily and sometimes even hourly...a few weeks ago we actually purchased our return tickets before our outbound tix because the price dropped dramatically for a brief period on the specific flights we were eyeing...we eventually bought the outbound a couple weeks later when those fares also dropped briefly...we prefer to fly through Miami from Houston

oddly enough, it's usually cheaper to fly out of Austin vs. Houston, even though it's almost 200 miles further west

TY

As I said in a previous post... Must check prices daily sometimes. they change and vary from day to day... We have always been able to get a fair price doing this. Is it work? yes. But worth it... Jet blue has different prices for different days of the week, and its of cource good to be flexable. We fly non stop jet blue to St.M at least twice a year, and have never paid over 450 round trip, and sometimes much less, and that's in the hight of season... We have property there so we are not locked into the weekend, sure that helps, but again there price changes a lot... Keep checking... And also for us. We do not book way ahead, as we find the closer to flight date the cheaper the tickets... Hey that's us... Just some info.

Pat that is also our benchmark.

We booked outbound only for Fall flight on JB as inbound wasn't available when we made our reservation. I've checked fares daily on both DL & JB and they are unchanged for more than a month.(this comment not directed at Pat).

Hoping inbound for Nov will go down. Our return date is flexible by a day or two but no more than that.

We had an odd assortment of miles and points on different carriers so we actually cobbled together AA flights (one connection) out of White Plains and n/s JB back into JFK for November and I laughed in spite of myself when I realized how expensive those 'free' ff tix really were. When you start adding up the taxes and forward seats and possibly luggage, and then don't forget insurances........ or not, and those free tickets suddenly aren't as 'free' as you once thought they were. <img src="http://www.traveltalkonline.com/forums/images/graemlins/duh.gif" alt="" /> <img src="http://www.traveltalkonline.com/forums/images/graemlins/duh.gif" alt="" />

I'm on the brink of flying Spirit again. I swore I never would, but we'd save $1000 over any other airline flying from DTW.

We use FF points on JetBlue frequently and it shows the difference in added costs. N/S to SXM (from BOS with one checked bag) is always $5.40...the return is $68.87

Now if you add the comfy seats it climbs a bit (we do)