Booking your air flight: when is the best time for the best price ?
07/18/2017
Getting your air flight booking in early can be an advantage, provided you look around.You can book well in advance for air flights. Nearly a whole year with most airlines, as flights are rolled out for the coming year.With certain budget airlines, this can be six months, as summer and winter trips are rolled out.
Booking your air flight: when is the best time for the best price
Getting your air flight booking in early can be an advantage, provided you look around.You can book well in advance for air flights. Nearly a whole year with most airlines, as flights are rolled out for the coming year.With certain budget airlines, this can be six months, as summer and winter trips are rolled out.
At this stage, some very cheap flights are available (that typically increase massively the nearer the date comes).At first issue flights are empty, they are blank checks, waiting to be written.Initial prices on air flights are usually hefty, but in some cases, they represent real value.
An Explanation
Let us explain what happens with airline ticket prices. At the first stage of selling the service, you have an empty airplane. It is months till the actual departure date of the flight.At this stage, the airline is not too fussed about selling tickets. It has the time to market them, and few people are immediately looking for flights up to a year in advance. As a consequence of this ticket prices may be quite high.
However, there may be exceptions to this rule. Here is one example: A Low-cost airline is launching its summer flights program, it is December so not many people are looking at flights, but they want you to know what they are offering.To do this, they release a limited amount of tickets into the so-called cheap buckets. So if you are looking for summer flights check out the offers in December, you may be pleasantly surprised !.
After Christmas can be pricey
Airlines know that vacationers are looking for cheap flights after Christmas when they have digested all that Turkey, have had enough of the winter cold, and feel the urge to head to the sun. During this initial period, it may be more difficult to find bargains.
Prices, as you get closer to the departure date, can vary. The economics of the flight is dependent on flight sales.The airline wants to sell as many high-cost tickets as possible, but it also seeks to fill the flight with paying passengers.It is these seemingly contradictory goals that affect day to day and month to month pricing policies.
On a day to day or even hour to hour basis airline staff are monitoring sales and adjusting prices accordingly.If sales are going well more tickets are upgraded in price, if sales are going badly, ticket prices are reduced.But, since a customer does not want to spend their entire life online, we need to give you more specific information than that.
Around three months before departure can be a good time.
There come critical points when the airline has to make decisions about what is the maximum profit it can make from the flight. About three months before the flight, if tickets are not selling well, the airline may start to release numbers of lower price tickets.
It may be best to hold back from buying to see if there will be a further adjustment downwards.One popular idea is that the closer to the flight date the more expensive tickets become.In most cases this is true, but it is not always so.
If a there are still unsold seats close to the date of departure it may be that the airline gets a little nervous about profits (please bear in mind that airline profit margins have become relatively thin in recent years due to increasing competition).
In this scenario, the airline will start to release seats into cheaper buckets just to get the flight filled. It could be that the carrier will not make much, or indeed any, profit from this group of seats, but it is best for them to have a passenger in a seat paying at least some money than fly with an empty seat generating no money.The decision is yours.
Summary
If you really want that airline ticket, you will probably be prepared to pay a slightly higher price rather than lose your place on that flight. However, if you want that great deal just follow our advice