Is there a cheapest time of the month in which to book flights?

elleroo

hi,

Just before we went away last week I priced up flights for a summer holiday that were brilliant, but surprise surprise the prices have gone up now. Which leads me to wonder, is there a cheaper time of the month to book flights?

shudd1967

I am no expert but I love holidays etc and love all the research etc. I am not sure so much about a time of the month, think that can vary to be honest but I know time of the week for instance can make a difference. Prices tend to be higher on a monday (monday blues) through to late Tuesday. Sometimes on a Wednesday they have dropped a bit but usually by Mid thursday they at roughly their lowest.

Last week I booked our flights to the Red Sea via XL.com. I priced them on Monday night and they came to just over 1400 for the four of us - by the time i booked on Thursay they had gone down to 1217. The earlier you can book flights ususally the cheaper they are.

I usuallly use sidestep.com and kayak.co.uk sometimes travelsupermarket. then more often than not going direct to the airline can work out cheaper.

Takecareofthepennies

If you are looking to book on a scheduled airline, try looking Sat/Sun.
Few business travelers book their flights on the weekend and some airlines have tweaked their pricing policy accordingly or even have occasional "sales" on weekends (KLM, for example, have done exactly that twice this year already).

samanthag

i booked 4 flights on monday to go to majorca in august from cardiff they were over £1000.00 a few weeks ago and now they have come down to £400.00 so i booked them there and then
so sometimes it is worth waiting it is just a risk you take as they can go either way
hope this helps
sammy

Takecareofthepennies

To add to that: I believe there are at least two different airline pricing systems.

You get the likes of Ryanair who will always sell their cheapest seats first and ticket prices will only ever go up over time.

In contrast to that, you get many airlines operating a "yield management" pricing model. Ticket prices can change at any time, up or down, and are influenced by a host of factors. With this system, it is usually cheapest to book 3 - 6 weeks before your flight. That said, they sometimes suddenly offer the rock bottom fare again a day or two before the departure date so as to get at least a few bums on possibly a lot of unsold seats. Unfortunately, it is not an exact science ...

elleroo

Thanks guys - plenty of food for thought there !

alared

Takecareofthepennies wrote:

You get the likes of Ryanair who will always sell their cheapest seats first and ticket prices will only ever go up over time.

Not true.
Ryanair prices do go up but also go down as well.

I have often watched a certain flight only to see it go up and cursing for leaving it too late,but then checking a few days later to find it`s gone back down.

Supply and demand is the key.

Sam_Bee

Takecareofthepennies wrote:

In contrast to that, you get many airlines operating a "yield management" pricing model. Ticket prices can change at any time, up or down, and are influenced by a host of factors. With this system, it is usually cheapest to book 3 - 6 weeks before your flight. That said, they sometimes suddenly offer the rock bottom fare again a day or two before the departure date so as to get at least a few bums on possibly a lot of unsold seats. Unfortunately, it is not an exact science ...

That's an incredible generarilisation. You try booking flights long-haul 3-6 weeks before Christmas, or the key summer holidays!

It all varies. If i'm booking Christmas / New Year / Summer / Easter long-haul I will book 320 days before hand when the seats are first released.

I know that for off-peak seasons, January is a good time to book, as all airlines offer specials to co-incide with the peak booking period.

And then keep my eye on other seasonal specials that might ultimately influence where I go.

And i'd never, ever, ever leave long-haul, scheduled flights to the last-minute. That's a recipe for paying over the odds.

Takecareofthepennies

Sam_Bee wrote:

That's an incredible generarilisation.

Calm down dear. The operative word here is "usually". Of course high-demand dates command higher fares earlier on.

And I agree with you on intercontinental flights - don't leave to the last minute.

Incidentally, I found traveljungle.com to be a pretty good (if a little clunky) site for comparing airfares. They seem to be the most comprehensive in the sources they trawl.

Takecareofthepennies

alared wrote:

Not true.
Ryanair prices do go up but also go down as well.

I have often watched a certain flight only to see it go up and cursing for leaving it too late,but then checking a few days later to find it`s gone back down.

Supply and demand is the key.

Alared -

I have checked with a friend who works in Ryanair's IT department.

It seems we are both right.

Supply and demand is the key, as you say, but only in so far as Ryanair have a certain number of seats in each fare bracket. Once these are gone, the price goes up to the next higher level. It will not normally go down and I am happy to qualify my earlier statement, following my learned friend's explanation:

He says that it would take special circumstances for Ryanair to offer lower prices again once they have gone up. One example he cited was last year's Despatches programme on TV, where Ryanair got a lot of bad publicity. To counter that, they offered lots of 1 p tickets, even for flights that were already selling at higher fares. This is not their normal practice though.

They do not operate a yield management system (that tries to forecast the eventual load factor on any particular flight) but simply up prices the more seats they sell. The price you see for any given flight will not normally be lower again later with Ryanair.