Travel Tuesday Is Still One of the Best Times to Buy a Plane Ticket
Last year we wrote several posts about Tuesday’s Trip . This day was originally pointed out to us by the travel site Hopper. When looking at historical rate data, we found that the Tuesday after Thanksgiving traditionally offers more discounts than Black Friday or Cyber Monday combined.
The reason for the significant discounts is simple: by the end of the year, the tourist needs of people are decreasing. Most people have already booked their vacation tickets for the rest of the year, but they haven’t started thinking about other winter travel yet. Airlines are offering special deals to encourage you to go ahead and book those tickets, offsetting what could otherwise lead to a drop in ticket sales.
Based on his research (which Hopper claims is often 95% accurate), here are some of the in-house trades we’re likely to see on Tuesday.
And international:
He also (obviously) invites you to use his rate tracker to set discount alerts for destinations of interest. You can absolutely do this, but you can access discounts no matter what service you use to purchase, including airline websites.
This year, he also has some inside information on several airline deals slated for Tuesday.
- Hawaiian Airlines will offer special fares on nonstop flights to Australia, South Korea, New Zealand and Japan, with one-way fares from Honolulu to Sapporo, Japan, starting at $ 299 per person.
- Cathay Pacific will offer promotional rates from the United States, including new Seattle and DC gateways, to destinations in Asia such as Hong Kong, Beijing and Shanghai, as well as destinations in Australia and New Zealand.
- Icelandair will offer special fares to Reykjavik-Keflavik Airport.
- Qatar Airways will offer special fares to destinations such as Bangkok, Bali, Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), Da Nang and Seychelles.
- Philippine Airlines will offer special fares to destinations such as Manila, Tokyo, Singapore, Bangkok and Seoul.
- South African Airways will offer the lowest fares of the year to destinations such as Johannesburg, Cape Town, Accra and Dakar.
- Avianca will offer special fares to countries such as Colombia, Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, Guatemala and Costa Rica.
Several friends took advantage of an afternoon last year to buy tickets to visit me in San Francisco. At the time, they could buy round-trip tickets from North Carolina to San Francisco for less than $ 200, which is much less than the traditional $ 500 trip. Our editor-in-chief was also able to book a ride from New York to Seattle for $ 246 , significantly less than the $ 400-600 fare she saw the day before.
As with all sales, your mileage can vary depending on where you want to travel and where you are flying from. That said, if you’ve been thinking about a trip this winter, it’s worth doing a bit of research on Tuesday to see if you can find a deal.