DALLAS – Alright, who’s ready for summer vacation?

Before everyone’s hands go up at once, let’s emphasize: who’s READY for the holidays? There are experts who say you need to shop now (or maybe you should have shopped before now) to find the best summer deals.

Willis Orlando explains that it’s like swimsuits. And, “When are the swimsuits on sale?”

“Right now,” he said. “If you wait until April or May to buy that bathing suit for your summer vacation, guess what? Everyone is looking for one at the same time too, and prices skyrocket.”

Orlando is the Senior Product Operations Specialist with Scott’s Cheap Flights, which Orlando says scans hundreds, if not thousands, of airfares each week and posts deals like this: “Just this morning we saw early summer fares from Dallas to the Greece for $484 round trip If you wait until April that price will double I can guarantee.

If you find a good deal, you might want to jump on it quickly this year. Because, for the first time, Scott’s Cheap Flights is making travel predictions —17 of them to be exact.

Each prediction comes with its own confidence rating, so manage accordingly. None of this is guaranteed. But one prediction is that more Americans will fly this summer than in the pre-pandemic summer of 2019.

Orlando advises travelers to prepare for the return of the crowded plane.

“As someone who has traveled a lot this year, I will miss this empty seat,” he said. “I enjoyed that.”

Many of these travelers may also be voucher rich, after all the canceled flights for the past two years.

“We have all this pent-up demand…and people have thousands of dollars in credits and vouchers ready to be spent,” Orlando said. “Those are going to expire at some point, and people want to spend them.”

If you have these vouchers, put on your reading glasses now and check them out, Orlando recommended.

“Airlines have been decent in extending expiration dates. Delta just said all airline credits are now valid until 2023. It was sort of the industry leader,” he said. “But, we advise people, if you booked a flight in 2020 or 2021 and you ended up canceling it and taking this voucher, check your expiry date and go to the airline’s website to see if that has changed.

If for some reason you need to cancel a trip this year, Scott’s Cheap Flights also anticipates that US airlines will not reintroduce change fees this year for Main Economy or Premium Class fares.

They also believe that average airfares will increase by 10% in 2022 and that only one European country will require a quarantine period for vaccinated American travelers. And they believe Japan will reopen to vaccinated Americans no later than August 31.

The reason the timelines for these destinations are particularly important, Orlando says, is that the website is seeing a trend away from our previous pandemic favorites that were socially distanced and off the beaten path. He says there is now a clear return to major population centers.

“Right now we’re looking at London, we’re looking at Paris…Rome,” he said. “That’s where people want to go.”

Orlando says airlines are repositioning their fleets to meet this trend.

“This repositioning of planes, this reshuffling of routes should result in good business to Europe, and once Asia opens up, good business to Asia as well,” he predicted.

As this transition unfolds, he notes, some routes closer to home have developed a glut of capacity – meaning there are deals to be found now. Like Puerto Vallarta nonstop: $194 round trip.

“These are major carriers. We’re not talking about Spirit or Frontier,” Orlando said.

But there are bargains much better than that. These incredibly good deals are affectionately referred to as “error fares” at Scott’s Cheap Flights.

“When something goes haywire…like an airline, for example, leaves a zero on a price or they misquote a business class flight as an economy class flight,” he explained.

Unsurprisingly, Orlando says wrong fares are “without a doubt the most popular thing we send out. We only sent nine in 2021.”

He thinks there could be more in 2022 “because we expect a very competitive environment when airlines get a lot of people on board very quickly”.

• A $23 round-trip flight from Boston to Puerto Rico
• How about $27 from Baltimore to Salt Lake City?
• $63 from Atlanta to Santiago, Chile!

“A co-worker of mine actually took that flight,” Orlando said.

Airlines don’t always honor them once they report the error. Orlando said it’s only 35 or 40 percent of the time they’re honored. But that shouldn’t stop you from booking it.

“Give them two or three days to decide what they are going to do,” he advised.

Even if the airline rejects your airfare booking error and raises the price, Orlando encourages you to ask the airline for a credit, voucher, future upgrade or lounge pass for making a mistake that made your hopes skyrocket.

Finally, because of the pandemic, many people have become strong supporters of travel insurance (including this author, after a month of hassle recovering the costs of a COVID-cancelled trip to Iceland).

Orlando says it doesn’t personally purchase coverage, but says that if you book a very expensive trip (by your standards) – especially if many elements of the trip are non-refundable or non-cancellable – travel insurance can be a important consideration.