Revealed: flight-booking hacks that can save you cash

Posted by kuailai99 on September 25th, 2018

Lots of us research our holiday plans during the week, then discuss the options with our travelling companions at the weekend. But if you go online on a Saturday to buy your tickets, you could be paying over the odds. Airline pricing models are fluid, so a price you see one day (or even minute!) might increase or decrease the next. The airlines keep their pricing model data close to their chests, so there’s no set rule about when is the best time to whip out your plastic.Cheap Flights from Guangzhou to Chiang Mai However, looking at three years’ worth of data (2015-2017), we found that travellers who bought their tickets on a Saturday paid on average 5% more than those who went online to make their purchase on a Monday. On a £500 flight, that’s £25. While it might not make a huge difference for the cheapest fares (after all, how much lower can a £9.99 flight go?), for group trips or pricey flights, it could be worth the wait. Want to increase your odds of booking at the right time? Check out the Best Time to Book tool, which gives an indication of the best time to book your tickets between set routes for hundreds of destinations – and the cheapest months to travel, too. So whether you want to book a dream trip to Tokyo or a citybreak to Krakow, it’ll tell you how far ahead to book – and which months to travel – to maximise your chances of the lowest fares.Conventional wisdom has long held that the cheapest fares are for Tuesday or Wednesday departures. But our research turns this ‘fly midweek’ wisdom on its head. An analysis of three years of Skyscanner flight data indicates that the cheapest day to depart from the UK is typically a Friday – hooray for the weekend! And the priciest day to fly from Blighty? Sunday. That’s great news for short-breakers – or those who want to turn five days off work into nine days away. Flying out on a Friday instead of a Sunday saw an average saving of an impressive 18%. On pricier flights, that could easily pay for an extra night in a hotel – or that piece of lightweight carry-on luggage you’ve been eyeing up.