Last year finding affordable tickets to GenCon wasn't difficult, but this year it's a real struggle. Has there been a carrier change or something like that? I've been keeping an eye out for a month and there's just nothing. Frontier has one route with extremely early departures that would eat an entire convention day. :/
Dunno if its available where you are, but I was able to grab super cheap SouthWest fares in their current price drop.
Where you flying in from??
My brother bought his flights (LAX to IND) on Southwest yesterday and they were really inexpensive. We followed suit (though we go LAX to DTW and drive down to Indy) and also found great deals.
Assuming steady fuel costs and no major disasters/events, airfare costs are going to be highly dependent on how competitive and busy a given origin-destination pair is.
If you live in a hub city for an airline, your costs will likely be more on that airline unless there is enough competition. I live in a hub for United. This year, direct flights are considerably more on United than direct flights on Southwest.
Kind of late, but a useful page is When to Buy Flights at Cheap Air. Put in an origin-destination pair, and you'll get a historical graph of prices by days before departure. It's kinda fun to see how different the curves are. Some are pretty flat (not much variation between 300 days and 5 days before departure) while some have a definite trough before rising dramatically.
Heck, its imo cheaper (even with hotel costs and food factored in) if you say take 2-3 more days of vacation and DRIVE in...
Ended up booking with Southwest. For two people, we're still spending more on our plane tickets out of Atlanta than it'll cost us to split the hotel with another couple. Frontier was even worse, both in terms of flight times and all the nickel and dime fees that really add up.
Oh well. Better luck next year. At least we're getting to GenCon! :)
I'm driving from South Carolina (10.5 hours). Booked something through Home Away and splitting it four ways. Even with fuel/parking/tickets/housing/badges, etc. We are coming out Sub $300/person staying Wed - Sun (Monday Check out). The only thing not factored in are meals and loot which I figured as being variable anyway. Last year I booked a hotel and was by myself so it was much more expensive. As it looks, the same group will be going again next year so we will more than likely do the same thing. If you don't mind the drive, Home Away or AirBnB are the way to go!
It is NOT just you. Flights seem awfully expensive this year- and I've been tracking ticket prices since November. Ugh.
Not sure what expensive is to anyone else, obviously... My South West was about $426 round trip; Considering that I bring 2 pieces of luggage (free), it ends up being cheaper than anything else that I've found. I'm flying from San Francisco,Ca, btw...
funny note: Looked at a few old flight emails, and it was more expensive for me 5 yrs back.
-Uriel
I checked daily, for United airlines, and wound up getting tickets for $330 round trip, which I thought was good. When I checked Southwest, theirs was $578 and not non-stop.
I paid with points but the cash equivalent (and currently this exact price) round trip from ATL to INDY non stop arriving Thursday, leaving Sunday, is 238 bucks. Now I'm not sure what everyone considers expensive, but that's cheap no matter who you are and how often you fly :)
You'll not find any better service at that price point. Hell, you'll likely find even less service at much higher price points....
Now of course, this would vary WIDELY depending on home airport and legs available. My GENCON partner is unfortunately flying from Nashville to Indy, and all options on SW are expensive, terrible, and connect through timbuktu...