The Best Time To Book A Flight

When I bought my plane tickets (Delta Airlines) to fly from Albuquerque to Los Angeles for our high school reunion, it was in April when gasoline prices were fast rising to sky-high levels. Before taxes and fees, the price for the round-trip was $221.40. 

That would have been roughly the same price for one fill-up of gasoline for my motorhome. I would have needed at least three fill-ups for the trip had I drove. The choice was obvious.

Since then, airline ticket prices have risen, so it was a good thing that I booked my flights when I did.

Condé Nast Traveler has posted an article on the best times to book a flight according to travel experts.

They begin it with:

Every traveler has a theory on the best time to book a flight. We’ve heard it all: The lowest fares are on Tuesdays at 3 p.m. Eastern. (No, Saturday at 6 a.m. is the best time to buy!) You need to book at least two months before you fly. (No, you should fly at the last minute to score a deal!) But even with all these recommendations, there’s still no guarantee that you’ll find cheap flights.

“The notion that there’s a single best day and time to buy tickets to get a good deal is a myth that simply refuses to die,” says Willis Orlando, senior product operations specialist at Scott’s Cheap Flights. The reason it’s so persistent, Orlando explains, is that this concept used to be true decades ago when airline employees would update prices every week, meaning that savvy passengers could snag deals by booking right after those updates. But “the fact of the matter is this is just not how things work anymore, and it hasn’t been for a long time,” Orlando says. “Airfare these days is highly complex, and constantly changing, sometimes by the hour.”

Considering that the pandemic has caused shifts in passengers’ buying patterns (flexibility is king) and how airlines have responded (no more cancellation fees), the best time to book a flight formula becomes even trickier.

Luckily, there are still some reliable strategies passengers can use to score the best deals. One rule of thumb: Aim to buy tickets during what’s known in industry terms as the “prime booking window” or “optimal booking window.” This is the sweet spot several weeks—or even months—ahead of departure when deals are most likely to be had, prices aren’t as likely to fluctuate, and passengers have plenty of choice.

To read more, go here.