Tuesday Is Not the Day of Buying Tickets for the Magic Plane
If you consider yourself a smart traveler on a budget, you’ve probably heard the advice to wait to buy your plane tickets on Tuesday , because that is the point of the week when tickets are supposedly the cheapest. Well, that might not be the case anymore.
Unfortunately for us bona fide believers, airline data analyzed by Hopper shows that Tuesday is not the magical booking day promised. To do this, you will need to book your ticket exactly at midnight, and even then it will save only about 6% (on average about $ 18). Yes, and it only works with 1.6% of domestic routes. At Bloomberg, chief data analyst Patrick Sarri explains why the old golden rule is gone. Airline revenue managers who used to manually create flash sales to meet weekly goals and objectives have been replaced by computers. Basically, all decisions are automated, so these sales models are now less predictable.
So when is the best time to book? Thursday is the best days for both domestic and international flights, resulting in an average of $ 10 savings on domestic flights and $ 25 on international flights. However, the Tuesday midnight special is still valid for some domestic flights, but it may not be worth a missed sleep. The worst days to shop are Monday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
And while you are booking, be sure to pick the best departure and return days. Hopper’s data shows that the cheapest day to depart is Wednesday and the cheapest return is Tuesday, unless it is an international flight. In this case, the cheapest day to depart and return is Wednesday.