Travel

Booking Flights In Advance:

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For many years, nerds the world over have been trying to dig up trends in airline pricing data. Of course, airline companies, being smart behemoths with lots of money, have their own herds of nerds who spend their time figuring out how to maximize revenues through ticket pricing strategies. Unfortunately for us, this statistical nerd battle means that the trends that can be extrapolated are few and far between, as the airlines deliberately avoid certain trends so they can sell the most tickets for the maximum price. The doubt that exists as to whether you ll get a cheaper ticket is partly engineered to encourage you to buy as soon as you know you want to make a trip (pantomime hissing and booing is appropriate at this stage).

Recent research has revealed more about the pricing strategies of the airlines, most of which change their ticket prices a number of times a day. It becomes apparent that a change in ticket-hunting strategy is, therefore, also necessary (and that those blog posts on booking at midnight are rubbish). Here s your guide to when it usually is cheaper to book in advance, and when it most certainly isn t.

when it s cheaper

Midweek, out of season

The clich is true midweek flights are cheaper. A trip from Chicago to New York is presently 15% to 20% more expensive on days other than Tuesdays or Wednesdays. If you re flying high season, it might be worth booking in advance just to be able to get a midweek ticket, but also because the prices go up as demand goes up and planes get full.

Two months before the flight

There is no conclusive evidence that flights are cheaper if you book ages in advance. In fact, it s often not the case. But in a study of 12 months worth of data on the two busiest routes in the United States (Chicago-New York and Houston-Dallas) comparing the economy class pricing of six different airlines produced the cheapest prices two months before the flight. From here on, the prices started rising. In a paper for the Social Sciences Research Network, Professor Volodymir Bilotkach and others made the same finding for the international route from New York to London.