A little background:
My DFIL has very generously taken his immediate family (11 of us!) on 4 Royal Caribbean cruises since 2001.
In December, will will be going on the newest Freedom class ship, the Independence of the Seas, for an 8 night cruise over New Years Eve.
I act as the family travel agent, making all the cruise, pre-cruise hotel, as well as airline arrangements,
I have been diligently checking Kayak.com since 330 days out to book airfare.
Round trip from Philadelphia to Ft Lauderdale or Miami was running $500+ per person! I began looking at doing one way fares each way to cut costs
Back in early April, a one way fare popped up on Delta thru Atlanta to Ft Lauderdale for $99 a person, which I immediately snagged! Sincew we go a day early, connecting flights are not a problem.
Now, to book return fares. Because we are coming off a cruise, we couldn't fly before 12:30 pm
Every day, many times a day since then, I checked Kayak.com. I really wanted non- stop on the way home, since it is January 4th, a huge travel day. I didn't want to mess with connecting flights.
US Airways non stop has been stuck at $357 per person for weeks. I was content to wait for Southwest to open the dates up. Friday morning, it jumped to $637!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Kayak.com went to work for me, and pulled up a one way fare of $155 per person non stop out of Miami at 3:30 pm!
So, roundtrip for $254 per person!
( I checked again later yesterday, and the same flight had gone to $192, and this morning it was $254!)
So, I guess the moral of this saga is it pays to check many times a day, and perserverence pays off. Being in the right place at the right time didn't hurt either!