Tickets to Spain - do we really need to book in advance?

[Sirine1708]

I've booked BA tickets to Mallorca for July 2024 in December 2023. However, we could buy the same tickets almost for the same price in April 2024.
So does it make sense to book Spain so far in advance or there's always plenty of flights due to it's popularity amongst Brits? We are thinking about going to Tenerife for summer hols 2025.

I read online that the best time to book is 3 months before. There are also apps that will track flight prices and let you know when to book

@showeringthisaft unfortunately those apps report every £1 change so I stop paying attention after few emails.

If it's in school holidays and you are booking it very close to your holiday time, you may find it very expensive. We had to book emergency flights back from Spain February 2023 and because we were returning in a school holiday, the flights were more then twice the ones we had booked originally .

I wanted to change return date on the tickets bought 6 months in advance and an extra cost would be equal to the initial price (£600). That's why I'm thinking if there's plenty of tickets to Spain, what's the optimal time befor depature?
Or maybe we just need book tickets to and from destination separately so that it was cheaper to change the date say for return date.

Sorry, I can't help on optimal time . I was just saying that if you need to travel within a particular time frame and that's within school holidays, then it's not always a good idea to leave it too close to the time .

An example for us is that we are off to Malaga just after Christmas, so we've booked our flights as soon as they came out . DS and his partner need to get back for work, so they've also booked their return. DH and I are retired so no need for us to be back at any given time so we'll leave it a lot closer to decide when to come back, as things may change between now and January .

To add that when you say 'Spain', it would vary between which Spanish and which UK city eg plenty of flights between Birmingham and Malaga, not so much if you wanted to go from Birmingham to Valencia .

I’ve just booked flights for just after Christmas and they were super expensive. Not sure what the answer is here. I was tempted to leave it for a bit, but I’ve booked accommodation separately so didn’t want to risk not being able to match the dates.

It's difficult to predict accurately because travel availability has fluxed a lot from 2020 to now. I do notice that for 9 months - 6 weeks before peak season short haul flights, the price tends to bob around within about a £50 variation, seemingly at random but doubtless due to the airline algorithms. During that time if one airline gets more expensive, another will get cheaper. Then they swap around. I have no doubt they share price information with each other, same as grocery/goods retailers do. Sometimes there's a variation of up to £75. Then around six weeks before the date the price climbs pretty steadily.

So no ime there's not much gained by buying short haul flights loads in advance.