Best Day Of The Week To Buy Plane Tickets
The Google Flights team looked over five years' worth of airfare data to find patterns on the cheapest days to fly and the best time for booking your flights during each season. Here are the cheapest days and times of the year to buy plane tickets.
best day of the week to buy plane tickets
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While you may have heard that it's cheaper to book and pay for your plane tickets on a Tuesday rather than a Saturday, that's not necessarily true. "There isn't much value in purchasing your tickets on a certain day of the week," Google said.
While there is no magical time or day of the week to book airfare for the best prices, your best bet is to fly midweek, specifically Wednesdays, for both domestic and international travel. Flying over the weekend usually comes at a significant price premium.
So, yes, flights do get cheaper as the date gets closer. Sometimes the best deals are found by booking last-minute flights. When airlines want to fill the empty seats on the plane, they are likely to lower the flight price to encourage people to buy tickets. But, be mindful that at some point, they will most likely will go back up.
According to the internet, the best day of the week to buy flights is a Tuesday. Apparently, this is due to airlines announcing deals on Monday evenings. By Tuesday at noon, other airlines are trying to match those deals. So Tuesday afternoons are the best time to hunt for reduced airfare. But is Tuesday really the cheapest day to buy airline tickets?
According to a recent Farecompare.com study, the cheapest day to fly is Wednesday. According to the Jack's Flight Club quote above, it's Tuesday or Thursday. I think it's safe to say in general it's cheaper to fly on a weekday or a Saturday. Why? Because it's slightly inconvenient. Maybe the question you should ask is 'when is the best day to fly?'.
Nicole Hunter, travel blogger at Go Far Grow Close, has been to over 65 countries in the last 40 years. Hunter has purchased countless airfare and said unless an airline is having a sale, the cheapest tickets are offered mid-week.
As the plane starts to fill up, the tickets will increase in price. If the plane continues filling up, Hunter said the price will continue to climb. If purchases stabilize, then the airline will lower the price once again to attract more buyers.
The best news? They found that the average air ticket price has been slowly but steadily decreasing over the past few years, both in the United States and around the world. This is due to increased competition between airlines, larger and more efficient planes, and longer flight possibilities, all giving customers more flights to choose from and all-around lower prices.
Travel website CheapAir.com(Opens in a new tab) compared over 917 million airfares in more than 8,000 markets and released the info in its huge 2018 Airfare Study(Opens in a new tab), where they said that there's not actually a best day to book tickets. According to their findings, the average lowest fares on each day of the week only differ by a few bucks, which is clearly nothing to lose your head over. With that being said, we'd still suggest taking Expedia's Sunday findings into account, or at least compare prices for a week. If you don't see a price that stands out to you on Sunday, it's probably fine to pull the trigger any day of the week.
AirFareWatchDog(Opens in a new tab) editor Tracy Stewart tells us that the Tuesday thing actually applies sometimes: Low-cost airlines like JetBlue(Opens in a new tab) and Southwest(Opens in a new tab) do have a history of releasing sale prices late on Monday nights and leaving the tickets cheap for Tuesday. A study by FareCompare.com(Opens in a new tab) also claims that Tuesday (at 3 p.m. specifically) is the best time to buy tickets.
The moral of the story: There's always going to be a discrepancy between the best day of the week, or whether day of the week matters at all. But there's clearly a reason Tuesday and Sunday were mentioned multiple times, so it wouldn't hurt to keep your eye out on those days.
Expedia(Opens in a new tab) has one suggestion: No matter where you're headed, book tickets that have you leaving on a Friday. According to their findings from 2018, the cheapest days to fly internationally in economy are Thursdays and Fridays, domestic economy flights are cheapest to start on Fridays, and flying internationally in the premium cabin is best to leave on Fridays and Saturdays.
Takeaways: The end of the week (Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays) are looking to be the best days to book cheap flights. Flying out on a weekend will up the cost significantly, so we'd suggest not doing a Saturday or Sunday unless you have no other choice.
Spring actually turned out to be the trickiest time to buy, and it's the season that requires the most planning ahead. It's not a huge travel season, but discrepancies with spring break causes some serious fluctuation. The difference between the best and worst priced tickets was apparently $263, which was an even bigger discrepancy than summer. Yikes.
A VPN's ability to virtually slingshot you to another location has numerous perks to trick the system, and one that comes in handy for this topic is the possibility to get better plane ticket deals by spoofing your location. According to Pete Zaborszky, founder of BestVPN.com(Opens in a new tab), this works best when your journey has multiple international destinations. Theoretically, you could use a VPN to purchase plane (or train, or bus) tickets in each of the countries that you'll be visiting instead of getting US prices, potentially helping you save big time.
According to travel booking site Hopper, flying midweek will score you the best prices. Tuesday and Wednesday are typically the cheapest days to fly domestically. For international travel, midweek is also best. Hopper recommends departing earlier in the week (between Monday and Wednesday) and returning later in the week (between Tuesday and Thursday) for international flights.
Keep in mind the lowest fares will be nabbed fairly quickly. If you do not act promptly, there is a good chance the cheap fares will be gone by the end of the week. If you find an excellent price on Tuesday afternoon, TAKE IT! Do not wait a day or even half a day to see if the prices continue to slide. If you would like to track a flight price in increments, make use of Google Flights. This service alerts those searching for plane tickets if the price of a selected flight is about to rise. The service also shows the anticipated rate hike to boot.
Plenty of people book their plane ticket six months in advance. Some book a full year in advance as they assume they will score the best price by purchasing as early as possible. This is not always true. Studies have shown the best flight prices are obtained when purchased two months prior to the date of departure. Though this finding is not true of every single flight, it is true for the vast majority. If you plan on flying out of the country, it is best to shop between five and a half months and one and a half months prior to your date of departure.
Below, we will go over the best and worst times of the year to fly, the best and worst days of the week to fly, and the best times to book your flights. By the end of this post, you should understand how to save a bit of money when booking your flights, so you have more to spend at your destination.
Taking a trip to Nicaragua in the fall, for example, can be a fantastic adventure. Within the span of a few weeks, you can scuba dive with hammerhead sharks, climb a volcano and go boarding back down, whitewater raft through canyons, and see monkeys in the forest. The best part? There are cheap flights, plenty of availability, and since it is a shoulder season in Nicaragua, everything at your destination will be less expensive, too.
Similarly to the best times of year to fly, the best days of the week to fly are those with less demand. The fewer people who want to fly on a major route on a specific day, the lower your price will generally be.
Hot Tip: If you can move your plans around so that your flights are mid-week, you are likely to save a bunch on your tickets. The same goes for award seats. You are much more likely to find an award seat to New York City midweek on a Tuesday than at the start of the work week on a Monday.
Bottom Line: The most accurate answer we can give you is this: the best day of the week to book your flight is the day that the price is lowest. Unfortunately, there are no consistent patterns, despite what you might have heard or read!
Google Flights is a great tool for looking at pricing. As you can see in some of the images we used above, you can see the pricing of flights for 2 full months at a time. This makes it quite easy to see which days of the week are going to be the best. It also can save you a lot of money by showing you that a day or two after or before your flight will be cheaper.
Shopping for cheap flights is a challenge, but with a little training, you can become an expert on finding the best deals out there. Sure, you can compare discount travel sites to see if you can find lower airfares, but there are more useful ways to finding the cheapest flights.Here are five tips to help you find cheap airline tickets, including what is the best day to find cheap flights and more!
Ask anyone the best day of the week for booking flights and they will probably say Tuesday. Is this actually true or an urban myth? To some extent, it is true. Keep on eye on those screens mid-afternoon as airlines usually release their weekly prices on Monday evening and Tuesday morning. This leads to competition among providers.
There is a finely balanced window between booking early and booking nearer your departure date. The window for the best deals on domestic flights in the Canada is usually between three months and 30 days before departure. For long-haul tickets, plan ahead and buy them between five and a half months and six weeks before your travel date. 041b061a72