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Saturday, March 8, 2014

Best Time To Book A Plane Ticket


The Best Time To Book A Plane Ticket
According To New Study

by  Suzy Strutner  Posted: 03/01/2014

Finally, there’s a scientific answer to that magic number of days before a flight when tickets are at their cheapest.

The answer?
Are you ready? 
Are you reeeally ready?
Fifty-four days before takeoff is, on average, when domestic airline tickets are at their absolute lowest price. And if you don’t hit 54 days on the head, you should usually book between 104 to 29 days before your trip -- within the “prime booking window” -- for the lowest possible prices. In this window, ticket prices typically hover within $10 of the lowest price they’ll ever reach.

At least that’s what the data from 2013 tells us.

The folks at CheapOair spent the last year analyzing over four million airline trips. They tracked ticket prices from 320 days before takeoff all the way up until the day before, calculating precisely which day each one hit its lowest point.

Air travelers tend to believe they’ll find the lowest of low prices when they book “at the last minute.” 
 This, according to all present data, is one hundred percent false. 
The researchers found that, on average, a ticket was at its highest price on the day before the flight. The second-highest price was two days before the flight, the third-highest was three days before… and so on, all the way to 13 days before the flight.

This pretty much solidifies the rule that you should NEVER book your ticket within two weeks of a flight… a mistake that 36 percent of CheapOair users made when planning their trips.
While the researchers found that 54 days was indeed the magic number for booking on average, they’re quick to point out that this isn’t a hard-and-fast rule: your flight’s “best price” window depends a lot on the specific trip you’re taking.

If you’re going somewhere incredibly popular at an incredibly popular time -- like spring break in Florida, for example -- you should book well before the “prime booking window” begins. When there’s constant, strong demand for a flight, the researchers explain, airlines have no incentive to lower ticket prices as time goes on. The same principle holds true for flights to hard-to-reach airports in small cities: there’s little airline competition here, so ticket prices don’t drop nearly as much over their lifespan.

Foreign countries are incredibly popular destinations with hard-to-reach airports, so the researchers suggest booking much earlier than the 54 days recommended for domestic flights.

Here are the “magic numbers” for some common international destinations:
  • Europe: 151 days before your flight
  • Asia: 129 days before your flight
  • The Caribbean: 101 days before your flight
  • Mexico: 89 days before your flight
  • Latin America: 80 days before your flight


Happy booking, travelers!
This goes against everything airline analysts have said the last few years. I think probably because the only type of flight included in the study were non-stops. Think about how often you get to fly non-stop. It's probably almost never, and those flights are more expensive anyways. Everything that airfare watchdogs say is that Tuesday afternoon through Thursday morning are when fares are at their lowest due to competing airlines releasing discounted fares to undercut each other. And, weekends are by far the most expensive time to purchase tickets because demand has driven the prices back up.



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3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Tips on getting better plane tickets is what more people should be searching for before spending a lot of money that could have been saved.the the price of traveling is only going to get bigger so these tips might be helpful for some. nice post...

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luci said...

The best time to book flights is a bit more complicated. There are a lot of different variables that can affect pricing as every market is unique around the globe. We have found incredibly cheap airfares at a variety of different times before we wanted to fly.