Airline flights...do they add more?

[flowergurl]

Hello,

Well, the trip to Hawaii for my daughter's wedding is starting to come together better. I purchased six airline tickets so far. Now, my sister and her family plan to join us, hurray!

Here's my question. Many of the one-stop flights are starting to sell out leaving an array of two-stop flights (we're flying from Michigan to Hawaii). Direct flights are just too far above the budget for the number of tickets we need.

Do airlines tend to add more flights if they sell out all of the one-stop flights they have or will my sister be stuck with buying the two-stop flights if they sell out?

Does anyone know or have experience with this? The prices have already gone up from 1200/ticket to 1400/ticket since I bought the first cluster of six tickets last Friday.

We're debating waiting a bit to buy the next set of tickets. Any advice? The Hawaii trip is set for June 2, 2012.

Thanks!

Diane

 

[Carolinian]

Flight schedules are thought out long ahead and are not adjusted day by day for loads. When they sell out they are gone, and you have to keep your fingers crossed for cancellations.

 

[flowergurl]

Flight schedules are thought out long ahead and are not adjusted day by day for loads. When they sell out they are gone, and you have to keep your fingers crossed for cancellations.

Oh boy, thanks for the heads up. Looks like we better get searching and just book the best thing we find at this point. Better safe than sorry, I sure wouldn't want to be sitting around waiting for cancellations!

Diane

 

[Talent312]

Sometimes airlines substitute planes with more capacity, but you cannot count on that.
Their schedules, crews, fuel-needs and gate-personel are typically set far in advance.
This close to your trip, I doubt that they're going to add flights.

You might look at flights that depart very early or arrive very late.
You could also try separate itineraries for flights to the coast and flights from there.

 

[x3 skier]

Back in the day, airlines would sometimes add "sections" when they had a large demand.

Not going to happen any more so if it is sold out, it is sold out. If someone cancels, the seats will reassigned, usually PDQ since they do sometimes (always ) oversell the capacity on popular flights. So, even if you have a ticket, you might not get a seat.

Cheers

 

[wcfr1]

According to todays paper, the Spring Break crowd was so big this year that Delta, Southwest and JetBlue added flights.

Not the norm but it does happenn.

http://www.tampabay.com/news/busine...-busiest-spring-break-season-in-years/1222389

 

[tschwa2]

Airlines sometimes add flights or may adjust to a larger/smaller aircraft as the market dictates but...

I doubt the flight you are looking at is nearly sold out. It is just at an occupancy level that is now selling higher priced tickets. If the demand is so great, they are not going to add another flight and start selling $600 seats. When you start seeing tickets in the $3500-$4000+ range for Hawaii and the seats are fully refundable and changeable only, that is when the flight is almost sold out and if they sell enough $4000 tickets that the airline thinks that bumping the needed passengers becomes too expensive they will add another flight or get a bigger aircraft.