When to Book your international flight

There seems to be some angst about when to book your overseas flights to the Civitan convention in Tallinn next July.  There are several sites that you can subscribe to that will tell you when the fare goes down (or up). Two I've been satisfied with are www.tripadvisor.com and www.airfarewatchdog.com.  Post your planned flight literary on them and they keep tabs on changes in prices.  They will email you with regular updates about changes in fares and flight options.  One I haven't tried but have checked out is Microsoft's www.bing.com/travel.  This one has a "price predictor" option that tells you if it will get cheaper at some later date.  They do so using historic flight data and will predict whether the date and flight you are trying to book will go down, go up or stay the same with a relatively high degree of certainty which they post (e.g. 83% certainty for your selection to go down if you wait.)  They have certain limitations to their prophetic powers.  The "price predictor" function only works less than 120 days from departure, the trip abroad must be at least 2 weeks long and it only works between major airports such as Atlanta and London or Frankfurt.  Neither Birmingham nor Helsinki were not on their list.  Even if your airport isn't included in the "predictor" they are still a good online travel agent since flights to European gateway cities such as Atlanta to London are a good predictor of what they will be from Birmingham.  I checked this morning and in spite of the higher fuel prices at the moment, international fares to Europe in the summer are starting to come down.  I found great fares in May and June ($850- $900) but still $1200 in July.  Those same May-June fares were $1200+ last month at this time.  If you usenthe watch lists above, try putting in several options on cities and dates and see how the pricing comes in over the next few months. Be paitience.... it's still a virtue and might save you some money...  Next blog: Using an experienced live travel agent with an 800# and email for only $25 to book your international travel.