When planning a trip, it is very important to know what is the best day to buy a flight or plane ticket . There was a time when travel agencies were in charge of the management and preparation of the trip, but today the consumer is in charge of everything. This is possible thanks to reservation web portals (Booking) and travel metasearch engines (Trivago), but there are a number of things that the average consumer is unaware of.
One of them is that there is an ideal day of the week to buy flights and even an ideal time. In the following lines we will reveal one of the secrets so that your next plane ticket comes out at the best price.
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ARTICLE CONTENT
1. The best day to buy flight tickets.
2. The best time to buy flight tickets.
3. Is it better to book in advance?
4. Tips for buying flight tickets.
What is the best day to buy flight tickets
By following the steps that we specify below, we can save between 10 and 20% on the plane ticket , an amount of money that we can spend on other things (such as a good hotel) or save for the next trip. Of course, a plane ticket does not come out at the same price on a Monday as on a Saturday, and there is a suitable day to buy a flight.
The first advice we must follow to book the best price is to avoid weekends. We know that this requires extra effort and is more difficult to combine with work, but if you want to fly cheap it is better to avoid Saturdays and Sundays. That is what emerges from an article published in the Wall Street Journal, after an analysis of reservation web portals and metasearch engines.
It is logical to think that. During the weekend, workers have more free time to travel and, with the increase in demand, prices also rise. However, there could be a day of the week when prices are lower.
It turns out that Monday is the day on which flight agencies and other operators launch their offers. Among these offers, there are some that work and others that don’t. If the promotion has not had the desired success, prices go down in many cases,reaching mid – week lows . In this way, it is estimated that the best day to buy flights is Tuesday of each week.
What about the best time?
Of course, this is not an exact science. The price of the flights is subject to many other factors, and the price of the offers is only one of them. Despite everything, Tuesday is the cheapest day by statistics. But the Wall Street Journal study goes a little further and determines what is the best time of each Tuesday to book a ticket. Let’s see the result.
Tuesday is usually the best day to book. | Image from: Unsplash.
It turns out that the best time to book is, statistically, at 3 pm on the same Tuesday. However, the price of the flight changes more than 60 timessince it goes on sale, which means there may be another time (perhaps weeks in advance) when it’s cheaper. That brings us to the next question.
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Is it better to book in advance?
Following the same study by the American newspaper, we came to the conclusion that it is better to plan and buy the flight between 50 and 60 days before departure. Another study by CheapAir, an online booking portal, ensures that there is an ideal purchase window of between 3 weeks and 54 days before the trip. Finally, the economist Makoto Watanabe, a professor at the Juan Carlos III University of Madrid, believes that the best thing to do is to buy the tickets about eight weeks before departure.
As we can see, the results are quite confusing, but we can deduce from all of them that it is best to book between 3 and 7 weeks before. In any case, there is a popular belief that “the sooner the better”, something that is completely false considering the number of times prices change.
As we have pointed out, the client now wants to plan every aspect of his journey, so many specialized websites have launched analytical tools to know when the best time is. One of the most recommended is Skyscanner, with which we can predict the perfect week to make our purchase.
5 other tips for booking cheap flights
We already know what is the best day, the best time and the best period to buy a flight. Next, we offer you a series of tips that we must also take into account when planning our reservation.
1. Delete the cookies
It seems silly, but it is not at all. This is a recurring trick when making a reservation of any kind, and it is that companies can use your search record to find out if you are interested in that flight and raise the price. Deleting the browser cookies, browsing in incognito mode or making the reservation from another device will allow you to obtain a clean price.
Tips for booking a cheap flight. | Image by: Sebastian Leon Prado.
2. Buy from airlines
Metasearch engines like Momondo or Trabber always compare hundreds of websites to show the best price, but after making the purchase they may apply some chargefor the service. Therefore, it is convenient to compare the price of the search engine with that of the airline’s own website. The result may surprise you.
3. Choose the best airport
Choosing the destination airport is almost as important as choosing the best time to book. It may be convenient for you to arrive at a secondary airport that is well connected to the city you want to go to. Although the journey is somewhat longer, the price is usually cheaper in these destinations.
4. Round trip or separately
There is another belief that the return ticket is always cheaper than buying the routes separately. Absolutely false. The rise of low cost flight companies makes prices change from one moment to the next, so it is possible that buying two one-way tickets is cheaper.
5. Applications and alerts
Many companies, metasearch engines and flight search engines offer services and applications that show us the exact moment when a flight is cheaper. Another option is to offer your email and subscribe to their newsletters to receive exclusive offers and promotions that you cannot miss.
- You can also read: 10 places to travel when you are still young.
