When to Buy an Airline Ticket
Posted on January 27, 2011 6 Comments
UPDATE (2.2.11): GREAT response to my article posted in the comments by Laura. Check our her amazing insider information here: http://www.50by25.com/2009/08/getting-to-race-tips-for-finding-cheap.html
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I buy a lot of airline tickets. Looks like I’ll be purchasing a ticket mid-week for my June trip to California. Probably flying Southwest. Will have to test out these findings and report back to you.
Whatever You Do, Don’t Buy an Airline Ticket On …
Wall Street Journal 1/27/2010
How are your ticket purchases going lately? I had to buy my recent tickets for New York and Charleston on a Sunday. Bummer.
Category: Life
Tags: Travel
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6 Responses to “When to Buy an Airline Ticket”
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January 27th, 2011 @ 11:09 pm
I can’t give much advice on buying airline tickets apart from evidently tuesday lunchtime is a bad time as lots of people buy then because they don’t feel so great.
Other than that, I’ve flown with SouthWest and the staff were lovely (6.5 years ago, but still…)
January 28th, 2011 @ 4:23 am
Thanks for the tip, I am looking for tickets now, I guess I will wait until Monday night!
January 29th, 2011 @ 12:30 am
this is good to know since I am eyeing international tickets right now!
February 1st, 2011 @ 2:19 am
As a former airline revenue management analyst, parts of this are true… but I think it’s way too broad to say “buy on Tuesday.” Sales can happen ANY day of the week, and actually, analysts take turns doing rotating weekend shifts so that there is coverage throughout.
And all that data about more tickets being sold midweek is kind of a red herring – just because more tickets are sold then doesn’t mean that fares are cheapest. Actually, if you look at booking TIMES, you’ll find that there are definite spikes, but it’s mostly during the 9-5 period, when people are at work. No surprise then that weekends are slow, and I’d guess that on Mondays, people are too busy getting a start to their work week to poke around online booking travel.
Finally, about the sales – they can happen any day of the week that an analyst notices a market needs help. I don’t know why various sources perpetuate the myth that most sales happen on Tuesdays – that is just NOT TRUE. What, does the WSJ think that pricing analysts only work on Tuesdays and then sit back the rest of the week? As a revenue management analyst, I’d come into work on a Monday and get a list of the sales that were filed by pricing analysts over the weekend – they weren’t waiting till Tuesday to do that!
Here’s a post I wrote on my blog a while back about airline pricing: http://www.50by25.com/2009/08/getting-to-race-tips-for-finding-cheap.html
February 2nd, 2011 @ 4:41 pm
Thanks for sharing Laura. Great advice!
February 9th, 2011 @ 9:23 am
This is an awesome article. I love to travel and your tip just gave me an idea on when to get the best tickets if and when I want to have a getaway. I love it!