No golden rule to find cheap air fares
Many people say Tuesday best time; experts disagree.
Travelers dream of the perfect trick to find the cheapest airfare every time, every trip.
There are theories, some of them backed up by real number-crunching — shop on a Tuesday, 57 days before your flight. But using a tidy formula to find the cheapest fare may be as futile as trying to time the stock market.
“There isn’t a golden rule anymore,” says Patrick Scurry, chief data scientist for Hopper, a travel-information firm that archives ticket prices. “There are these ‘average’ rules, but they’re not that useful necessarily for a specific trip.”
Airlines Reporting Corp., which handles tickets sold through travel agents, pinpointed Day 57 as when you’ll find the cheapest average domestic fares. But in a nod to the inexactness of the science, it also said that the lowest domestic prices are relatively unchanged about 50 to 100 days before a flight.
For international trips, ARC says shop 171 days out. CheapAir.com, a faresearch website, says the magic moment is, on average, 47 days before a U.S. trip. As for the best day to shop for travel, the accepted answer for many years was Tuesday because that is when airlines often announced advertised sales. Expedia Inc. says for tickets bought at least 21 days in advance, Tuesday is still cheapest Conventional airline sales often run three days, but some airlines are now using flash sales that further erode old rules about when to buy. by a thin margin over Wednesday, but Sunday is better for tickets bought within 21 days of travel — an average savings of $12, or 2.2 percent, over buying on Saturday or Tuesday, according to Expedia.
George Hobica, founder of airfarewatchdog.com, says you should keep checking fares every day because unadvertised sales can pop up any time during the week.
“Sometimes we’ll see amazing sales on Saturday mornings, especially to international destinations,” he says. “A lot of people don’t search on weekends because they think that Tuesday is the day to book.”
Conventional airline sales often run three days, but some airlines are now using flash sales that further erode old rules about when to buy. For example, Virgin America alerts its customers about a halfdozen times a year about a sale that usually ends within a few hours.
“They certainly work as long as you don’t do too many of them,” says Virgin’s CEO, David Cush. “It does create urgency in the consumer’s mind.”
Virgin’s flash sales are generally advance purchase for travel in a few weeks, so they are not practical for last-minute business trips.
Waiting until the last minute for a bargain fare doesn’t work as well anymore. Many flights are full, and prices usually rise as departure time gets close.
If you’re flying around the holidays, booking early is unlikely to save you much money. The experts say airlines know flights will be full, they know which days people want to travel so prices start high and stay there.
Buying too soon — booking that 2016 trip to Italy now because you had such a great time there last month — is a mistake because airlines usually aim high when they list flights 11 months or so before departure.
There’s another little trick while booking, according to CheapAir’s Klee. If you’re buying several tickets, it can be cheaper to book them one or two at a time rather than all together because of the way airlines price and sell seats.