Take it from us: Our team of flight deal analysts spends all day, every day searching for the cheapest fares to send to Thrifty Traveler Premium members. There are no best days to book flights: The best fares and sales don't just happen on only one day of the week. In fact, we find cheap flights, mistake fares, and unadvertised award sales every single day of the year.
That's why you should start each and every search with Google Flights. Google's search tool pulls flight pricing from nearly every airline, giving you the most up-to-date pricing. You can easily set filters, browse the calendar for the cheapest dates to travel, and search the world map for the cheapest destinations from your airport. Once you've found the perfect cheap flight for you, Google Flights redirects you to book directly with the airline.
In general, and especially pre-pandemic, airlines hike prices for last-minute flights. They assume only business travelers and travelers who need to be somewhere soon are that buy airline tickets last-minute. Airlines know these travelers will pay whatever it takes to get there. And trust us, you don't want to get stuck in that position a few weeks before a trip.
And remember: Start your travel planning by booking the cheap flight first on the dates that are cheapest to travel. Once you have the cheap flight booked, you can plan lodging, activities, and the rest of your trip. Not following the Flight First Rule is the #1 mistake that travelers make.
The Google Flights team looked over five years' worth of airfare data to find patterns on the cheapest days to fly and the best time for booking your flights during each season. Here are the cheapest days and times of the year to buy plane tickets.
If you're planning to book a flight, you may be trying to find the cheapest option. According to Google, it's cheaper to fly in the middle of the week, rather than on the weekend. Flights that take off between Monday and Wednesday can be between 12% and 20% cheaper than weekend flights. Sundays are an expensive day to depart, Google says.
While you may have heard that it's cheaper to book and pay for your plane tickets on a Tuesday rather than a Saturday, that's not necessarily true. "There isn't much value in purchasing your tickets on a certain day of the week," Google said.
Cheap flights. We've all Googled it. Whether it's a business trip, you're heading home to see family or you're off on your summer holidays, you want to know you're getting a good deal. And the internet is happy to help. The online world is cluttered with tips for thrifty air travellers, Alternative Airlines included. Blogs, articles and YouTube tutorials are all desperate to answer your questions: Is there a cheapest time to buy flights? Is there a cheapest day to buy flights? If I book flights during a solar eclipse while praying to Thor will I save some money on flights?!
If you don't believe us, the same company repeated the study two years later. In this report, it stated that the overall lowest average ticket price for domestic flights can be found 57 days in advance of departure. The lowest average ticket price of international flights was found to be 171 days before departure. In 2 years there had been a massive shift in what days were considered the cheapest to book flights.
Unfortunately, this cheap flight secret didn't make it into the golden rule of flight finding. It's not as catchy as the 6 week rule. It does show, however, how quickly these cheapest day to buy flight rules go out of fashion. In the world of cheap flight finding, if a study hasn't been done in the last 18 months, take it with a pinch of salt.
According to these two studies, along with many others on the internet, the cheapest time to buy flights is almost never when they're first released. This means that if you plan your weekend break months and months in advance just to save money on flights, you're wasting your time.
So, yes, flights do get cheaper as the date gets closer. Sometimes the best deals are found by booking last-minute flights. When airlines want to fill the empty seats on the plane, they are likely to lower the flight price to encourage people to buy tickets. But, be mindful that at some point, they will most likely will go back up.
According to the internet, the best day of the week to buy flights is a Tuesday. Apparently, this is due to airlines announcing deals on Monday evenings. By Tuesday at noon, other airlines are trying to match those deals. So Tuesday afternoons are the best time to hunt for reduced airfare. But is Tuesday really the cheapest day to buy airline tickets?
If you know how much flights SHOULD be, You'll know when you're getting a good deal. If you keep searching for flights, you'll get an idea of what's a rip-off and what's an absolute steal. $550 USD round trip from the UK to Japan? Yes, please! $550 USD round trip from the UK to India? Hmm, you can probably do better. Once you've done a few searches on a search engine like ours, you'll start to see how prices change and know when you've stumbled across a good deal. It's not a quick fix, but it's definitely an effective one. We suggest that you use Alternative Airlines for an easy comparable flight search - you can see which airlines offer the cheapest deals for the destination you wish to travel to.
You can't expect the cheap flights to appear exactly when you want them. This is where tools like Alternative Airline's Best Fare Finder come in handy. Our Best Fare Finder tells you how much you could save by slightly altering your dates of travel and allows you to see the cheapest time to fly across a week from your original search. You may find that it's cheaper to fly out a day or two later than you originally planned.
There's a good chance that the REAL cheapest day to buy flights is actually on 'special offers' days. Keeping an eye on when these kinds of 'special offer days' are may help you find some excellent deals! Days to watch out for include:
According to a recent Farecompare.com study, the cheapest day to fly is Wednesday. According to the Jack's Flight Club quote above, it's Tuesday or Thursday. I think it's safe to say in general it's cheaper to fly on a weekday or a Saturday. Why? Because it's slightly inconvenient. Maybe the question you should ask is 'when is the best day to fly?'.
In the early days of online flight booking, airlines used to manually post their updated prices at a certain time of day each week. This led to the rise of the myth that the cheapest time to book a flight was on Tuesday (and specifically at 3am, many claimed).
Flight prices change constantly and while your chances of getting a deal are better within a certain window of time (generally 2-8 months out, as mentioned above), there is no magic day on which prices suddenly drop. Price can drop at any time, which means the cheapest day to buy flights is the day you find a great flight deal.
It's popular advice we've all read on one site or another: Book early in the morning for the cheapest flights! Or don't book on a Friday night! Or only book at noon on a Tuesday. Or only book during a full moon. (Okay, that one we haven't actually heard, but we're sure someone, somewhere, has decreed it.) So we at Hopper were curious: Does the time of day you buy your flight really matter? Is there really a best time to book a flight? Are certain times of day cheaper? In the name of science, we dove into a whole lot of data (namely, about 20 million separate flight searches over the course of four months) and mapped what we found.
We found that travelers who search for flights on Tuesday at midnight save about 6% on their flights, making this the cheapest time of the week to book. In general, flights were slightly cheaper at midnight earlier in the week (Monday through Wednesday). However, this is only applicable to about 1.6% of U.S. markets, meaning that it's not likely you'll find the same savings on your specific route. And midnight later in the week actually gets more expensive. So put the "always book at midnight" myth to bed.
As the chart above shows, there really is no one-size-fits-all when it comes to the cheapest time of day to book, simply because there are so many factors: airline yield management, airfare sales, demand, and so forth. While some airfares seem to consistently increase at the same time each day, other routes' prices remain steady throughout the day and week. So anyone who says Tuesday morning is always cheapest may only be looking at a handful of routes.
First, the day you book: In a previous study Hopper found that the cheapest day to book your flight is Thursday for both domestic and international flights. However, there's a big caveat: The savings are smaller than you may think: about $10 for typical domestic routes and about $25 for international markets. Much like time of day, every route is different, and contrary to popular belief, there is, once again, no one-size-fits-all approach.
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