When you’re planning a trip, one of the most stressful parts can be looking for flights. By booking the best possible flight, you can save thousands of dollars. But when should you book that flight? Is it worth booking nine months in advance? Or should you wait for a last-minute deal?
According to online travel agent opodo.co.uk, the perfect time is approximately six weeks before you’d like to fly. Opodo checked return flights from the UK between November 2016 and 2017, analysing them based on price. When you book long-haul, short-haul, and domestic flights 42 days before departure, you can save 48% on the price of your ticket.
If you’ve got a short-haul flight that needs to be booked, it can be worth booking it in January, since this is the cheapest month to book. For many people, this is a great time to book a holiday away after while dealing with the post-holiday madness and winter-blues.
There’s even a day of the week that’s better for booking flights. If you’re travelling domestically, you should book on a Sunday for the cheapest rates. For short-haul, book on Wednesdays, while Tuesdays are a good time to book for the cheapest long-haul flights.
I consider myself somewhat of an expert when it comes to booking flights. I recently had to book a rather last-minute flight and found that it was better to try to find a flight between 10 and 14 days before departure than to just book one for the next week. The data proves this as well- if you book the second week before you’re due to travel, you’ll be able to get much cheaper tickets than if you were to book them the week before you’d like to fly.
It can be difficult to understand how flights work. For long-haul flights, airlines begin releasing flights up to ten months in advance. They release a certain number of flights for each booking class. As each class is sold, the price increases. However, you’ll often find that they’ll release seats at a lower price point around that six week mark to try to fill up the planes.
As you can see, it’s completely possible to do lots of travel this year- even if you tend to procrastinate or you have a busy schedule. Six weeks is just enough time to plan a fun trip, so why not see where you could go six weeks from today?
