You know, I am having similar questions…and after reading countless magazine/internet articles saying how the fuel prices will go up, I am VERY tempted to buy soon. VERY soon. I am not an expert, but 912$ taxes included for an overseas flight doesn’t sound that bad. I have found a flight to Madrid from Toronto during the high season (summer July-August) for 1115 bucks and it flies NONSTOP (taxes included). Now, that doesn’t sound terribly great, but it’s the best NONSTOP deal I’ve found to date (and I’ve been looking, let me tell you…for many, many weeks). If you have been searching for a while and that is the best price you’ve come up with, I say, go for it.
I think I may buy my plane ticket tonight…I’ll keep checking as many sites as I can.
Good luck! Perhaps Don or some other expert can give you good advice, too. Have you checked skyscanner.net? It’s great. I found my best deal with them.
Air Transat is a good one, too. Travelocity works sometimes, too.
H.

At first glance $912 seems a little high for Sept.Oct. since you can buy JAX-LON for Mar-May for $600$700 right now. I’d normally wait, but really am not sure what to tell you since there’s the very real prospect of fuel prices rising.

Oil prices are not the only factor in setting ticket prices, and no one knows if oil will stay this high, or rise even more, or fall, much less whether the airlines are buying fuel at current prices, or at prices set a few months ago. Competitive pressures often hold prices below where they would be if cost of fuel were the only consideration.

But what price will make you comfortable? If you would be happy paying $800, you have to balance the price you found against the chances that the prices will fall to $800, or increase to $1200 or more, and the work and worry that you will have to go through hoping to find a lower price. A lot of people like to just buy the ticket and get it over with, and spend the rest of their time planning their trip.

Since there are two of you, I suggest you consider all factors with your friend and agree on what will best work for you. I would also suggest you look at costs involving all possible airports (I think London has five; I don’t know about Florida) as sometimes you can save a bit by using another airport.

Just wanted to update people. We ended up deciding we were going to play the waiting game. But this past Tuesday I got my Kayak.com report and a round trip ticket from Jax to London was down $200 from the week before. We couldn’t pass up $650 round trip for the exact dates we wanted. Me and my buddy will be in Europe Sept 6-Nov 1!!!r

Nice to hear that you found a price you were happy with. Even if the price goes down some between now and then it’s great to be done with checking fares and to have the dates you wanted.