Buying Airline Tickets In Advance Will Save You Money

Buying Airline Tickets In Advance Will Save You Money

The holidays are quickly approaching. It is well-known that Thanksgiving in particular is the busiest travel day of the year. With it being less than a month away now is the time to get organized if your plan is to fly. The common wisdom used to hold that buying tickets close to the day of departure was the best way to get the best deals. A recent study has challenged this assumption. It presents clear evidence that, on average, purchasing tickets well in advance of the travel day is cheaper than waiting until the last minute.

The window for the buying the cheapest tickets for Thanksgiving travel is probably closing, so you should see what you can get. However, even if you can’t get as good a deal as you’d like for Thanksgiving there is still Christmas to think about. And you may be able to make savings for that holiday if you start looking for tickets now.

There is an article in Money magazine that offers compelling advice on when to buy airline tickets. It debunks many of the myths about when to purchase tickets and gives good reasons for purchasing tickets on particular days and within a particular timeframe. The fact that the author explains the reasoning and mind-set of airline executive is especially helpful.

I found this tidbit very interesting:

2) Weekends are cheaper booking days than weekdays.This is the truly surprising takeaway from the study. According to ARC data, the average price of a domestic flight purchased on a Sunday was $432, and it was slightly higher on Saturday, at $437. For a long time, the consensus advice was that the lowest prices were to be found on flights booked on?Tuesdays?or Wednesdays (when airlines tend to roll out new flight sales), yet the new study shows the average paid on Tuesday was $497.

The rest of the article can be read here. I was surprised by many of the findings presented in the piece. It has made me reconsider the way I book my airline travel.

One more thing: The article mentions nothing about websites that specialize in offering discount airfares. These can still be useful in finding cheap tickets. As with everything, you want to gather as much information as you can and then compare and evaluate different alternatives.