Best time to buy tickets and optimal time to travel
If you’re planning an airline trip this year, for the lowest economy class airfare on a domestic flight, buy your ticket 77 days in advance and fly on a Tuesday in January, September or October. That’s the nominal take from the latest “when to” study. This one is from Qtrips.com, an upcoming and innovative online travel agency, and it’s based on extensive mining of actual ticket prices.
When to buy
Unless you’re worried about just a dollar or two, you actually have a lot of flexibility. Qtrips identified several time frames for buying air tickets:
Booking 315 to 202 days in advance gives you “first dibs.” That means that just about everything you want — flights, seats, rooms, places and such — will be available and wide open for booking. But first dibs is likely to kick the cost of your ticket up by $50 or so.
Booking 201 to 128 days in advance gives you peace of mind. Most rooms, seats and such will still be available, but you’ll probably still pay a bit more — around $30 — than you’d pay at the best time.
The “Prime Booking Window” is 127 to 21 days in advance. That’s when you will find the lowest fares. Although the very lowest fares are 77 days in advance, you’ll find fares within 5% or so of that low point through the entire period. This is a very wide time frame — a lot wider than most “best time to buy” postings that other online travel agencies often publish. But it supports my ongoing contention that you don’t really have to zero in on one certain date. Instead, you’ll pay only a trivial premium buying either a good bit earlier or a bit later than that. The best times are also seasonal: 49 days in advance for winter travel, 77 days for fall travel, 85 days for spring and 113 days for summer.
Waiting until 20 to seven days before you travel puts you in either the “push your luck” or “playing with fire” groups. You may still find a good deal, but even if you do, your choices are limited. And if you wait later than that, you’re in “Hail Mary” territory, when only a miracle can save you from paying $200 or so more than the prime-time price.
Within any buying window, waiting as long as you can has some advantages. The closer to departure time you buy, the less likely you are to have to cancel or change your trip and face a stiff ticket change penalty. Even more important, while you wait, you could luck out with a flash sale price well below the averages.
Qtrips also checked the best day of the week to buy, and its findings do not support the advice you sometimes see to buy on Tuesdays. Instead, the day of the week you buy affects the airfare by only $1 or less. In short, buy when you feel like buying.
When to fly
The best days to travel are just about what you’d expect. Fares for travel on Tuesdays, averaging $301, are the lowest, but Wednesdays are close, at $304; both are about $50 below the overall average fares. The most expensive day to fly is Sunday, at $398, and fares on the other days range between $340 and $364.
The best months to travel are also about what you’d expect. Fares are lowest for flights in January, September and October, at $306 to $320. At the other end of the spectrum, fares are highest in March, June and December, at $370 to $374, and fares in the other months are closer to average at around $350.
Qtrips is the first online travel agency to mine its data and post results to determine optimum buying and flying dates. I expect several others in upcoming weeks, and I’ll report on any contradictory findings that I see.