Are we at the bottom of demand and a slowdown on airfare sales? The short answer: mostly likely yes, but that doesn’t mean we won’t still see some decade-low pricing, so we still have a buyer’s market.

Case in point: the small hike this weekend — which was followed on by some heavy discounting on Tuesday – it’s hard to pick a trend when both are happening at the same time.

After reviewing some of the airlines’ first-quarter financial information that was released in the past few days – a couple nuggets stuck out for me:

1) Continental has been very aggressive when it comes to discounting flights to Europe, and transatlantic bookings are up up 4%; plus, over the last 10 days, we have seen significant discounting from them to Latin America where bookings had been down.

2) Financial analysts have “Buy” ratings on many airlines – usually this is a sign of price firmness, but in this case, I think it is most likely an indication of how decimated the stocks are so consumers should still be in buyers market.

Smart Buying Tips:

1) Europe: You should be shopping now, and booking by mid- to late-May. Flights are heavily discounted from late May to mid-June, and those discounts are slowly leaking into July.

2) Domestic: If you see coast-to-coast flights below $300 roundtrip total, buy now – and the same goes for flights of about 1,800 miles or so when priced at at $220 roundtrip total, and short hops for under $150 roundtrip.