I honestly wish I had a better answer for y’all than “it depends”. But that’s the best answer I have.

You have a lot of variables when buying a ticket on Spirit, the popularity of your destination, the time of year, the days you plan on flying out on, etc. etc.

For example, when a friend asked me to come out to Colorado with about 3 weeks notice I was able to get a round trip ticket on Spirit for only $69 from DFW to DEN. If I was more flexible on my flight time I could have gotten a ticket for as cheap as $42. There were several factors that kept the price of the ticket low; I was flying out on a Saturday and returning on a Monday (NOT a Friday, then a Sunday) it was summer (read: not ski season), it wasn’t a holiday weekend, etc. etc.

I’ve also found a good deal on flying from DFW to Orlando in the summer buying tickets a few months ahead of time. Again, I was flexible on the day of the week we could fly, but I was still shocked that a such a good deal on a summer flight to Orlando was still available.

I tend to buy tickets further out in advance when I know I have to travel on popular travel days. I’ve kicked myself for not buying tickets when I didn’t purchase at the cheapest price on a trip I KNEW we were planning on taking, especially those that involve flying on a Friday, Sunday, or Monday.

My last two trips were weekend trips where I knew we had to fly out on Friday and return on Sunday. The first one I had more time to plan for, and if I hadn’t panicked an bought them 3 months in advance I could have gotten cheaper tickets if I had waited a few more weeks. For my other trip I had just 4-5 weeks advanced notice to buy tickets, and had I waited another week or two to buy tickets all the Sunday flights would have been sold out and I would have had to possibly cancel the trip.

The only other suggestion I have is doing your search in an incognito window so any webpages you open and files you download aren’t recording in your history. All new cookies are also deleted after you close the incognito window. Websites track cookies and if they see you repeatedly going back to the same flight it may increase the price of the flight you’re looking into. Some claim websites don’t increase the price of an item or service based on searches, some claim they do, but I say better safe than sorry. It’s at least not going to hurt to browse in an incognito window.

So yes, I’ve missed out on some deals for not holding out a little longer, but I’ve also been able to get same great deals by taking advantage of them when I saw them. It’s up to each person to know how much money, time, convenience you can risk by playing the waiting game and monitoring the trend of flight prices.

For more on Spirit Airlines, check out Tiffâ€™s comprehensive guide!