It’s blatant common sense but the best prices for a cheap flight can be found at certain times of the year and may also depend on time of the day and day of the week.
Use price comparison sites to assess the flights market first
There are plenty of good price comparison websites out there who take away the hassle of visiting indvidual airlines and flight providers and instead, allow you to select your requirements such as number of passengers, dates, class and destination of flight and compare the market on your behalf. Sites such as travelsupermarket.com compare over 100 airlines in seconds, then once your results have appeared you simply click on the links they serve up to you, ordered by the cheapest price.
Flights are more expensive in school holidays
Be sure to avoid the school holiday periods, as there is a strong demand for tickets. You’ll find less expensive tickets sold outside the periods of national or religious holidays, like Easter or Christmas. Book a flight at the end of February, before the schools close for the Easter holidays in March or April, or book for the first or second week of December or the 2nd of January, to avoid the crush of Christmas.
Midweek flight departures are cheaper
The most common day to fly is on Friday. Most people who want to spend the weekend off book their tickets on Friday or at most on Thursday. The best day to book a flight is on Wednesday, less passenger traffic. Wednesday is also the best day to book flights online. The best time is early morning or late at night, when few people are searching and airlines desperate to fill their seats.
Flight Search tips on tariffs
The search engine Bing has a forecasting system that calculates the current and previous price performance of airlines. This is used to determine the best time to buy a ticket on the dates that interest you. You can go to Bing.com to know if you can book your flight now or wait. You can also find tips for finding low rate prices on Travelocity.com. The site will also show the periods in which the lowest rates for your destinations apply. Google has just launched a flight finder service in the USA, and as you can expect from Google the usability factor is fantastic – here’s a quick link
This has been a guest post from Endri at tripandtravelblog.com, a top Finnish travel blog.
