The best time to buy is about two or three months before departure, according to studies of airline-fare trends reports the Wall Street Journal. Any earlier, you may end up paying hundreds of dollars more for the same coach seat as someone who books later. Waiting until too close to departure can be costly, too, because fares usually go up.
Fare analysts say airlines test demand route by route, starting international prices high and then offering some seats at low prices, for example, four or five months before departure. If particular flights fill up quicker than in past years, prices get pushed back up. If sales are slow against historical patterns, prices may drop further—but often not until two or three months before departure. That is when airlines start getting serious about unsold seats on international trips, reports WSJ.
With domestic trips, sales are typically launched on Monday nights and the cheapest prices can often be found on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. (Most leisure travelers shop on the weekends, however, when prices may be higher.) FareCompare, a travel-planning website, found 68% of domestic sales are filed Monday night, and typically last one to three days.
"Domestic has a very typical pattern,” Rick Seaney, FareCompare’s chief executive told WSJ. "But on international, there’s no real pattern."
Recent study of fares for peak travel periods—summertime—and found the lowest price loaded into reservation systems starts high and comes down for several months before moving higher closer to departure. Comparing 100 different routes to Europe, the highest prices were in October for peak-period travel, on average, so buying that early for summer would have been a mistake.
The cheapest time to buy that peak-period fare: April.
