How much will I pay for SFO to NYC? Well, that depends...is it more than two weeks out? Less than two weeks out? Is it a popular day to travel? Convenient route

How much will I pay for SFO to NYC? Well, that depends...is it more than two weeks out? Less than two weeks out? Is it a popular day to travel? Convenient route? Who else is flying? So many factors that make it difficult to know when to buy and what to expect to pay... For example, something I've noticed recently: the SFO to NYC red-eye will be cheaper than the evening flights up until about 3-5 weeks before the day of travel. Then, the red-eye will suddenly jump to almost double the price of the other tickets. All I can figure is that more than 3-5 weeks out, most of the people buying tickets are tourists, and tourists tend to not like taking red-eyes. Once you get inside the 3-5 week window, that buying pattern switches to primarily business travelers. For a business traveler, the red-eye means still getting in a full day of work before leaving, so they tend to favor that schedule. The fact that the price fluctuates so rapidly, and depends more on the buying patterns of other consumers than on the product itself, makes plane tickets look an awful lot like a futures market! And you know what else is sold on futures markets? ...commodities.