Vietnam – My flight
I have been talking about it for years and now I have finally bought my tickets to Vietnam. I had researched the best flights weeks ago: best airlines, most leg room, best service, shortest flights and shortest layovers, best arrival time, best departure times, etc. Cathay Pacific won in all categories except price. Depart at 1:30 in the morning, but arrive in Hanoi in the morning giving me time to find my way around before settling in to a hostel for the evening. Leaving Saigon late morning giving me plenty of time to get to the airport. The shortest flights available at around 21 hours with a relatively modest layover in Hong Kong for ~3 hours.
So I watched for weeks. I had fall back solutions with Qatar Airways and JAL, but prices on all of them were in the $1,600 to $1,700 price range with Cathay Pacific almost $2,000.
I am an airline ticket price watcher. Anytime I am planning a trip, I store multiple itineraries in Google flights and watch daily for changes. Since I know that prices can change minute to minute, I also will click through to price on the actual booking sites to ensure that I am not missing something. Typically I have seen the lowest prices available are 4-6 months prior to a flight. My strategy was to bite the bullet by October as a worst case but buy by the end of the summer if the prices had not changed. I had resolved myself I would make due and with the Qatar Airways flight into Vietnam and JAL out.
After almost 2 months of watching this past week I noticed the prices on multiple airlines started fluctuating, up and down. However, the prices on Cathay Pacific did not move. M forums I have red have indicated that it is very hard to predict when Cathay Pacific will run fare specials. SO, this didn’t surprise me. On Wed, I saw a price fluctuation for Cathay Pacific: $1,409 round trip, but you had to call the airline for the fare. I typically try to book through Orbitz, for itinerary history, stored traveler info and because they have a decent price match guarantee. So, I decided to wait.
On Thursday the price for he Cathay Pacific flights on Orbitz (and other sites) went down to $1473. Not the cheapest fare, but certainly the best flights for a great price. So…I booked it. I am going to Vietnam!!! The story doesn’t and here though. The next morning I did my regular routine of logging into check flight prices. Holy Cow!!! That same flights was now $1,100…an incredible deal. I felt cheated but at the same time I knew since I booked through Orbitz that I cold likely get a price match. So that is what I did. Orbitz had agreed to price match the fare. The fine print is that they will only do it after I complete the trip. OK by me.