I should have added earlier - I look for flights not necessarily to / from where I want to be. Then get to / from there with a budget airline. I only do this where flight costs are substantially lower than flying direct. Overall cost usually works out higher, when including stopover ground costs, but we do get to have a stopover in places we may not otherwise go. Copenhagen, Istanbul, Paris, London, Hong Kong. Why not?
Finding these fares is where the many online hours are spent.
I notice fares out of Milan are often cheaper than most. We may have to spend some time exploring Northern Italy in the future!
I suppose the most relevant for you re timing of bookings are our post-Camino flights out of Madrid. I booked those in the past two weeks, flying Cathay at the end of June. I have been monitoring fares out of western / southern Europe since they became available, so since mid-July-ish. These Cathay fares were amongst the best I'd seen, so I pounced. Not great fares, just the best I'd seen. Flying out of Madrid saves us that connecting fight. Plus, Hong Kong stopover!
There were three Cathay flights that suited our dates. Two of those days were cheaper than the third. Since I booked, fares on the day we are flying have increased as well. This is, I believe, yield management on the part of the airline. They may drop fares if the flight fails to fill, or may increase fares if the plane is filling nicely. It really is a crapshoot for us consumers.
The Cathay flights, MAD-HKG-BKK, are AUD $1050 each. Which stings, but peak season. There were ~$100 cheaper flights on Turkish, but we have already been to Istanbul.
Our Singapore Airlines flights Bangkok - London were booked in May 2023 for March 2024, AUD $550 each one-way. (We're having a month in the UK before our Camino.) LHR-Toulouse is $140 each.
I find that Emirates and Qatar fares seem to be staying high btw, and they had some of the best fares pre-pandemic. Perhaps people are booking with them out of habit. I'm also seeing Thai and Thai AirAsia X fares start to ease Bangkok-Sydney though, where we fly quite frequently, so hopefully the post-pandemic gouging is coming to an end.