Help Center
Short answers to the questions parents ask most often. Don’t see what you need? Email the founder directly — see the bottom of this page.
Getting started
How do I sign up?
Click “Start your free trial” on the home page and sign in with Apple, Google, or email + password. You’ll be asked for your home airport(s), your travelers, and your preferences — airlines, time of day, bags, seats — so we can tailor recommendations.
How do I find my club and team?
On the team-setup screen, start typing your club name. We have most volleyball clubs in the AES system pre-loaded; pick yours and we’ll show you the teams it carries. If your club isn’t there, you can add a custom club and team name — everything else works the same.
Where do tournaments come from? What if mine isn't listed?
Every week we sync the tournament calendar from AES — the scheduling system most volleyball clubs use — so the bulk of qualifiers, regionals, and nationals show up automatically with the right dates and city. If your tournament isn’t there (typically a non-AES event), you can add it yourself with the name, dates, and host city. Once you add it, it becomes available for any other parent searching for the same tournament — so you’re helping the next family who comes looking.
How do I add a trip?
Tap “Add Trip” from the header or your dashboard. You’ll see two options: Tournament or Personal. For a tournament, search by name or city — we’ll prefill dates and destination from the AES calendar. For a personal trip (a family vacation, a wedding, visiting grandparents), pick Personal and enter your own dates, origin, and destination — everything else works the same. Confirm travelers and we’ll start watching prices right away, usually within about ten seconds.
Can I track non-tournament trips too?
Yes. AirfareCoach watches any trip you add — spring break, a wedding, a holiday visit, a family vacation. The recommendation engine, daily monitoring, and text alerts work exactly the same way; you just pick “Personal” instead of “Tournament” on the Add Trip screen and enter your own dates.
How recommendations work
When should I buy?
That’s our job. Every day we pull current prices on your specific routes, compare them to typical prices for that route at that point in the booking window, and tell you in plain English whether to buy now or wait. We’ll text you when something meaningful changes — we don’t send daily noise.
What is Coach's Pick?
For each trip, Coach picks the specific outbound + return flight we think you should book and tells you why — nonstop vs. one-stop, time of day, how the price compares to typical for that route. You can tap Make this my pick on Coach’s Pick (or any of the other strong candidates Coach surfaces), and we’ll keep watching that specific itinerary and tell you the moment it’s a great price to buy.
If I pick a flight, does Coach stop watching the others?
No — and this is the question we get most. Coach checks every option on your route every single day, whether or not you’ve picked one. Picking a flight doesn’t narrow anything down; it just tells Coach which flight to measure everything else against, so we can give you a verdict on the exact itinerary you care about. If Coach finds something meaningfully cheaper than your pick, you’ll get a Switch & buy email — that email only exists because Coach kept looking.
Can I change or remove my pick?
Yes, anytime, and it costs you nothing. To swap it, tap Make this my pick on a different flight. To go back to having no pick at all, tap Remove pick on the flight you chose. Either way Coach keeps monitoring your trip exactly as before — nothing gets picked automatically in its place, and nothing is booked or cancelled. Making a flight your pick is never final.
Why do airfare prices change so much?
Airlines reprice constantly — sometimes several times a day. The biggest drivers are how far out you are from departure (prices usually creep up as the trip approaches, with occasional dips), how many seats are left in each fare class (once the cheap inventory sells, the next tier kicks in), demand for that specific route on that specific day of week, holidays and events, and what competing airlines are doing on the same route. That’s exactly why we monitor every day. Instead of you checking prices a few times a week and guessing whether today is a good day, we watch your trip continuously and tell you when something actually meaningful happens.
How are you different from Google Flights or Skyscanner?
Google Flights and Skyscanner are search engines — you go there, see today’s prices, and decide on your own whether this is a good price or whether to wait. AirfareCoach is a monitor and an advisor. You tell us your trip once. We watch the prices every day, learn the typical price band for your route at that point in the booking window, and tell you in plain English whether to buy now or wait — and we text you the moment something changes that affects the answer. We’re also personalized: every recommendation is filtered through your preferences — preferred and avoided airlines, the times you want to leave on each leg, nonstop vs. one-stop tolerance, bag count, seat selection — so the flights we surface are ones you’d actually book, not just the cheapest line on a search page. And we’re tournament-aware: we prefill dates from the AES schedule and show the airline’s actual all-in checkout price for your group, not a per-person base fare.
Why is the price you show different from Google Flights?
Two reasons. First, we multiply by your traveler count and add the bag and seat fees your preferences require, so the number on screen is what the airline will actually charge at checkout. Google Flights shows the base per-person fare. Second, when both legs of a pair are selected, we pull the airline’s own all-in total — the same number you’d see if you clicked through. We refuse to show per-person estimates as “round-trip total” because that number can be off by 10–20% versus checkout.
Why booking fast matters
Why does Coach say to book the same day?
Airlines don’t set one price for a flight. They sell a limited number of seats at each price, and when that group sells out the next seat costs more. That can happen any time of day — it isn’t tied to a nightly update. So the fare Coach showed you this morning can be gone by dinner, even though nothing about the flight changed.
How often do prices actually move during the day?
We ran a study pulling the same routes six times a day. On about half the days, an airline’s cheapest fare on a route moved at some point during that day — typically by about $30. Roughly a third of days saw a swing of $20 or more.
What if I wait to see whether it drops further?
Once a flight is already at a good price, waiting is a losing bet more often than a winning one. Looking at flights sitting at their best price of the past week, about 1 in 6 cost more the next day — typically $28 more per ticket — while only about 1 in 10 got cheaper. That’s the reason Coach waits to call BUY: by the time it does, the odds have already turned against holding out.
Can Coach tell me how many seats are left?
No, and we won’t pretend otherwise. Airlines don’t publish how many seats remain at a given price, and neither our data source nor anyone else’s can see it. We can explain how the pricing works and what we’ve measured; we can’t count the seats.
Where do these numbers come from?
Our own price history, not an industry estimate. The within-day figures come from a study of 8 routes pulled six times daily between April 26 and July 7, 2026. The next-day figures come from 209,540 observations across the routes we track. Both are averages across many flights, not a prediction about your specific flight.
Pricing
How much can this save my family?
It depends on your routes and how much they move — and we’re honest that we can’t promise a specific number. What we can tell you is how we check: we score every buy recommendation against what a typical family would have paid, with the misses averaged in alongside the wins, so nothing gets flattered by leaving the bad calls out. The bigger your family and the more tournaments your team travels to, the more the math works in your favor. For the current numbers, updated weekly, our track record publishes what Coach’s buy calls actually average per ticket — counting the misses, not just the wins.
What does it cost?
$49 per year unlocks daily price monitoring, text alerts when it’s time to buy, and end-of-season savings tracking. The free tier lets you create an account, load all your trips, and see prices and savings estimates — without paying.
Can I cancel?
Yes, any time, from the Subscription page inside the app. Cancellation stops your subscription from renewing — your card won’t be charged again — and you keep paid features until the end of the period you already paid for. The free trial is your chance to decide if AirfareCoach is worth it; once you subscribe, the annual fee is non-refundable.
Notifications
Will you spam me?
No. We only text or email when something actionable changes — a price moves meaningfully, a nonstop you were watching disappears, a recommendation flips from wait to buy. You can opt out of SMS or marketing email at any time without affecting your account.
How do I confirm I booked?
When you book, reply to any of our text alerts with “BOOKED $X” (e.g. “BOOKED $4850”), or tap “Mark as booked” in the app. We’ll ask for your confirmation code so we can build you a one-tap link to manage your reservation on the airline’s site.
Booking
Do you book the flight for me?
No. When you tap “Book,” we open the airline’s own booking page with your exact flights pre-loaded. You complete the purchase on the airline’s site, with your own payment method, under their terms. We never touch your money or your itinerary.
Why does the Book button take a few seconds?
We make a fresh request to confirm the airline’s direct booking link at the moment you click, because those links expire after about an hour. You’ll see a short interstitial page (“Taking you to United…”) while we resolve it, then we send you straight to the airline.
What if the link doesn't work?
Occasionally an airline declines to give us a direct deep link. When that happens we send you to the airline’s own search page (united.com, southwest.com, aa.com, etc.) so you can pick the same flight with one extra step.
Account and data
Can I change my preferences later?
Yes. Anything you set during onboarding — airlines, time windows, bags, seats, home airports, travelers — can be changed in Settings. You can also override your defaults on a per-trip basis from Trip Settings.
How do I export or delete my data?
Email support@airfarecoach.com and we’ll send you a copy of your data or delete your account, usually within a few business days. Details are in the Privacy Policy.
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