How far in advance should I buy individual tickets?
The short answer is you should try to buy your onward tickets as soon as you are reasonably sure of when and where you want to go, depending on your mode of travel. Generally speaking flights go up in price as the date and time of departure draws nearer. Particularly in the age of automated online pricing adjustments, usually flights are offered at their lowest price before any tickets are sold and then the price of the remaining seats creeps up as the plane approaches capacity. It used to be more common that the increases were triggered more by dates (the price goes up with 3 weeks to go, then up again with 1 week to go, etc.) but now it’s more common to see price increases based solely on that flight’s popularity. This often means you can get a cheaper ticket on an early morning or late night flight than you can on one leaving at a more convenient time. These pricing schemes are pretty similar around the world, although there are some exceptions, which we will get to in a moment. So
