If you’re thinking about booking your next flight on a Tuesday, then it might be time to reconsider that practice. For years, many travelers assumed that the best time to find cheap airfare was to make your booking on Tuesday, making it an undeniable travel “rule” that pretty much everybody accepted as fact without any questions. But since then, the way airlines operate has changed, and according to recent booking data, another day has quietly eclipsed Tuesday for value.
So what’s the substitute?
Friday.
Data from the travel booking services shows that Friday has become the new day to find the best tickets. Based on booking data, tickets booked on Fridays are now significantly less expensive than tickets booked on Sundays, which is still considered to be one of the most expensive days to book a flight. While the price difference on some (or, even most) flights may be small, they add up to save a considerable amount of money over time, especially given that airfare is just a fraction of the total cost of travelling.
Interestingly enough, not only is Friday becoming a smart day for booking tickets.
In addition to being a great ticket-buying day, it also appears to be a great flying day. According to many studies performed on the effect of departure days on airfare prices, travellers can save a considerable amount of money on airfare simply by adjusting their travel dates to a day or two later than originally scheduled.
There is one caveat though.
If you’re flying domestically in the U.S., Tuesday is still a good choice for airfare. Flights that leave the domestic area on Tuesday are typically significantly more affordable than flights that depart on Sunday; consequently, for those who have flexible travel dates, Tuesdays will be one of the better days to buy tickets.
The change in trends has surprised many frequent fliers.
Historically, airlines had a fairly regular cycle of pricing tickets. Airline pricing was systematically updated each week which allowed savvy frequent fliers to know which days they were more likely to find deals.
Those days are mostly a thing of the past.
Airlines now use complex algorithms to set their flight pricing that continually monitor current demand, competitive pricing, ticket purchasing patterns, available seats, seasonal trends, and many other factors that can influence demand. Consequently, prices for airline tickets can fluctuate dramatically at any point in time, not based on an established week-long pricing cycle as before.
Because of this, you will notice that today, the cost of a ticket on an airline will change due to thousands of different variables in the course of one calendar year (such as one domestic flight changing as many as 100 times), therefore making it much less likely that a person can predict the future price of any given ticket simply based on the day of the week he or she purchased it.
Traveling during certain times of year—and how many people travel—primarily affect overall airfare. However other factors will also play a role once you determine when and where you are going.
In general many international destinations tend to have good price availability in late summer while January tends to have low availability for domestic travel. Conversely, December remains one of the most expensive times for tickets due to increased demand around holiday-time.
For domestic flights, business travel patterns will continue to have a big impact on overall pricing structure changes by airlines. With fewer people conducting business related travel than in the past few years, airlines have adapted their pricing structures to accommodate changing patterns (not just by the time of year but also by days of the week).
With this in mind, what’s your best bet right now?
Instead of waiting until a certain day of the week to purchase airline tickets, consider using fare prediction tools like Price Alerts that allow you to track price changes automatically and receive immediate email notification each time a price drops below an earlier range (rather than manually checking the airlines’ website on a daily basis).
Also, booking an airline ticket well in advance continues to be one of the most effective ways to save money. Typically when airlines initially make their tickets available, they will compete against each other to fill the seats on their planes by offering re-attractively-priced introductory fares. As the departures start to approach, typically additional seats are sold and hence become less predictable from an air fare pricing perspective and tend to go up in £sterling or £dollars each time.
At the same time as experts remind travellers not to get too focused on chasing the very lowest possible price they can find for an air ticket.
In some cases there is no way to get an air ticket for less than the airline’s quoted price. In all cases the extra cost of having to travel via a longer airport layout, having to have an overnight stay and/or having to have a long period of travel time may out weigh any money that you have saved. There are some occasions where additional money for a direct flight and/or a more comfortable schedule will result in making the entire trip much more enjoyable.
Today’s travel business has changed. Flexibility has replaced previous beliefs.
Rather than following old rules such as only booking a flight on a Tuesday, you should be checking prices on a regular basis, checking prices over a number of different travel days, and allowing technology to do as much of the work as possible. The methods airlines now use to charge their customers has changed so much that you can get the best price available by being able to change your plans accordingly.
