An Associated Press Reporter May Have the Best Way to Decide When to Buy an Airfare

You're scheduled to take an expensive, long-distance flight several months from now. When should you buy your air ticket? Now? Or should you wait a few weeks in hope that the price may come down?
 
That's one of the most common predicaments in travel, and no one -- until very recently -- has suggested a persuasive answer. But Samantha Bomkamp of the Associated Press (she's an aviation writer for that organization) has devised a test that, to me, seems the best I've ever heard.
 
Samantha suggests that you go through the motions of inserting a booking into the website of an appropriate airline for your trip -- but without committing yourself. In other words, you fill out everything up to and including the moment when you are asked to choose your seat from a booking chart. But you don't go further than that.
 
Instead, you analyze the booking chart. If the plane for the dates of your trip is already heavily booked, if more than 70% of the seats have already been requested, then you can be pretty sure that the airline will not be reducing the price of seats in the future. Your best course will be to make a firm booking now, given that it appears that the flight will soon be completely booked up.
 
If, on the other hand, the booking chart reveals that very few people have yet requested seats, you know that the flight is not terribly popular and you can surmise that the airline will probably reduce the price in the future in an effort to fill up the plane.
 
Isn't that a neat suggestion? I think Samantha has come up with the smartest solution I've ever seen to the conundrum: when should I book, now or later? Have you ever seen a better plan?