Tucson Travel Forum

We will bringing our daughter to University of AZ in Tucson at the end of August, and I have not booked our flights yet. Does anyone have any experience with timing your travel booking for the best rate to Tucson?

It depends on the airline. Some get more expensive as time passes, some seem to get cheaper.
Your best bet will probably turn out to be Southwest airlines, maybe Frontier. ( Unless you are flying from NY, in which case Jet Blue into Phoenix and bus or train to Tucson may be best. )
Southwest seems to hold their prices steady until 2 or 3 weeks beforehand, at which point they rise 50-100%.

To Tucson from where?

I do a lot of my research on kayak.com, a site which searches essentially every booking and official airline site. What you'll find on kayak.com is a chart as well as graph showing trends in prices from recent searches as well as suggestions best on cheaper airfares for less expensive days. I think this is what you're looking for.

I use Kayak extensively, too. They include all airlines except Southwest and JetBlue. JetBlue just discontinued their non-stop flights from JFK. If you are coming from there, American often has relatively good fares to Tucson (JFK-DFW-Tus).

But do check into flying into both Tucson and Phoenix. There are more non-stops to Phoenix, but it is not always cheapest to fly there. Also check into price differences for rental cars in Phoenix and Tucson. I have found that Thrifty is often a good choice in Tucson.

Hi Mike. I'm not sure why kayak doesn't inlcude the JetBlue flights from NY to Tucson but I thought you'd like to know that it shows up as an option for a majority of their other destinations. For your future travels.... :)

"I'm not sure why kayak doesn't inlcude the JetBlue flights from NY to Tucson..."

Probably because JetBlue doesn't fly there.

Right, Jet Blue discontinued Tucson-New York service in May.

Check out ExpressJet as well (http://xjet.com). They have several non-stops to/from Tucson but are, unfortunately, discontinuing several in August. After August, we'll still have Sacramento, Ontario, Kansas City and San Antonio.
The airlines seem to be panicking right now about the fuel costs. I booked tickets from Tucson to Boston a little while ago and, not even a week later, both tickets jumped up over $100 each. If you're going this summer, for the start of the semester, book it now. If later, fares may go down. No telling, really.
Also: Phoenix to Tucson by train doesn't work. The Amtrak station is in Maricopa, which is 30 miles to the south of both Downtown Phoenix and the airport, and there isn't any public transit to that station. The easiest way to do Sky Harbor to Tucson is Arizona Shuttle, which runs about $25/person one-way.

It looks like Bocmaxima is right about prices rising.

Back in April I bought a roundtrip from Southwest: Burbank to Portland during August. It cost $260. I just checked again today, and the same airfare is now $320.