4 Best Time to Book Flights
Booking air travel is stressful. How far ahead should you book? How do you get the best deal? When is the best time to fly? We have all asked ourselves these questions, but finding the answers can be a challenge. To help take the stress out of booking airfare, we use data to determine the best time to book your flights in 2019, and share some tips on how to find cheap tickets.
4 Best Time to Book Flights’s mission is to help people make better decisions about when to fly and buy tickets. Our service improves over time as we learn from your feedback and data.
The 4 Best Times to Book Flights
The Best Time to Book Flights is 3 Weeks Before You Fly
The best time to buy airline tickets is 3 weeks before you fly.
but there are three exceptions that could save you hundreds…
1. The Best Time to Book Cheap International Flights is 6 Months Before You Fly
International flights have the most expensive airfares, regardless of when you book them. However, there are a few months out of the year that have cheaper fares than others. Here are the best times to book cheap international flights:
2. The Best Time to Buy Domestic Flights is 3 Months Before You Fly
On average, domestic flight prices will be at their lowest around three months before your departure date. This isn’t always true, but it’s a good rule of thumb. If you’re flying domestically within the U.S., try booking 3 weeks to 3½ months before your trip.
If you have the flexibility to book your trip for the best time of year, you can save up to 30% on airfare. The busiest travel times are when everyone is off from work and school and travel takes place during the holidays or over a weekend. If you can book your travel during an off-peak time of year, you’ll see huge savings on airfare.
The best time to book flights depends largely on where and when you plan to travel. To give you a general idea, the cheapest flights are usually available three weeks ahead of your departure—or about 21 days in advance. So, if you know when and where you want to go, start looking 21 days before and keep checking prices every day or two like we detail below! Here’s what we found:
Between 3 weeks and 4 months before departure date
For the past few months we have been working with a team of data scientists to find out the best time to buy flights.
We found that the lowest domestic airfares are usually between three and six weeks before departure, but that the savings can be relatively small compared to booking further in advance. Booking international flights more than two months in advance is usually better than booking less than two months in advance, but the savings are also relatively small.
Fares from Europe are generally better value than fares from other parts of the world.
The analysis was based on US$ prices for millions of flights that were offered for sale by leading global airlines over the period Apr 2015 to Mar 2016.
We used regression analysis and survival analysis techniques to analyse airfare pricing dynamics over time, incorporating the effects of seasonality, day of week, length of stay and other factors on prices.
I was recently booking a flight to San Francisco, and I found myself in a quandary. Should I book my flights now? Or should I wait a few weeks and see if they get any cheaper?
This is a question that frequently comes up. There is a lot of advice out there about when is the best time to buy airline tickets. But most of it doesn’t really answer the question we ask ourselves as consumers. It’s all about averages. Airlines publish data about how far in advance you should book. And that data is interesting, but it doesn’t help us decide whether we should buy now or wait. We want to know whether we can save money by buying at one particular moment in time, not whether there are savings to be had in the average case if you book exactly 2 months, 14 days and 12 hours before your flight.
So, I decided to take matters into my own hands and find out for myself when the best time to buy flights was.
Wondering when to book your next flight? Download our exclusive cheat sheet and get a free 4-week booking window for the cheapest days to fly.
Wondering when to book your next flight? Download our exclusive cheat sheet and get a free 4-week booking window for the cheapest days to fly.
Wondering when to book your next flight? Download our exclusive cheat sheet and get a free 4-week booking window for the cheapest days to fly.
Wondering when to book your next flight? Download our exclusive cheat sheet and get a free 4-week booking window for the cheapest days to fly.