What is the best day of the week/time to book overseas airfare? Or is there such a thing?
We are traveling to Amsterdam, and returning to Florida in May 2023.
Related: We are undecided when to book airfare. Some, such as the Capital One Travel Price Predictor, suggest waiting it out for lower fares until after the summer season. But we are terrified that prices will go through the roof due to inflation and fuel prices if we hesitate. Thoughts?
Thx
There is no such thing as the best day. It has always been a fallacy.
There shouldn't be any harm in waiting a couple of months, but if you haven't booked by the mid-fall it's unlikely things will get better, and you should just take what's on the table.
Book when you’ve confirmed your travel dates.
There is no best day to book airfare.
You can look on websites such as skyscanner.
Be forewarned it is ALWAYS best to book with the airlines. Helps with accountability and a viable papertrail.
Lastly, no one can predict the future. Not Capital One, a physic or any travel website.
After decades of trips to Europe I book as soon as my travel dates are secure and i know those months in advance. Always direct flights.
Good Luck
We also live in Florida. My observation is that flights are cheapest early fall but that last year at least some of those flights didn’t actually fly. Had I bought my desired itinerary, I would have been cancelled.
We booked for May 2018 trip in November but it was same price in March when our youngest committed to going with us. This year we bought in January but flights had been stable for couple months.
I use goggle flights and then book directly with airline.
You can set up price alerts on Google Flights, and also research price history. Use Flight Aware to check the specific flight's dependability. Never use third party bookings, ( such as Expedia etc,) book directly with the airlines. Stay flexible as so many flights end up being changed and canceled. Add an extra day at the front of the trip in case you don't depart as scheduled- this is especially important for those meeting tours and cruises.
Cross your fingers 🤞
I’d definitely not be booking flights to AMS right now for May of 2023. I assume the airport will get back closer to normal by then, but right now they’re trying to restrict flights into AMS.
I usually book my European flights about 3 months in advance.
We just purchased tickets to Germany for next April. Iceland Air had a sale and the price was better than what it had been.
I wouldn't ordinarily suggest booking now - I would normally book 2-3 months before traveling. Having said that, if you're seeing a price that looks good versus 'normal' prices and you know you'll definitely be traveling then, I would go ahead and book.
I'm a fan of Google Flights and used it to track my Seattle-->Heathrow-->Dublin and Heathrow-->Seattle multi-city flight itinerary before buying. I didn’t start looking as early as you are, but there definitely were very wide price swings. I finally jumped at the bait after seeing the price go down again.
I saw no dramatic price differences that I could tie to purchase dates. I did see significant price differences tied to the day of the week I wanted to fly. Fortunately, my preferred Wednesday flight days both directions were the best. Lucky me.
If you use Google Flights over a period of time, the graph will show the rises and falls in prices and you can see what the most common price is. I'd bite if the price for your dates falls below that most common price.
However, keep in mind that the lowest price shown may not be for the kind of ticket you want to buy. When you click through to the airline, you'll be able to see the different kinds of tickets available, their prices and what those prices allow you to do.
As the others have said - there is no best time. Fare sales happen, but so do fare increases. Trying to make sense of how airlines put their prices up and down is a doctoral thesis level exercise in frustration. If you want to catch a particularly cheap airfare, you have to be watching fares constantly.
If you are really worried about price increases, do remember you are traveling to Europe which has an excellent train system. It may be prices to AMS go up, but could you get to Brussels or Paris and take the train. Yes, it will take some research to make sure you are being cost effective, but there are ways to mitigate fare increases.
If you really wanted to and had the time you could fly to London and take Eurostar from London to Amsterdam.
Not sure why this question is in the England forum instead of the Netherlands or Transportation...
Back when PCs were toys and mainframes filled buildings, among the biggest purchasers of supercomputers were airlines. A big use was for maximizing their ticket revenue. To think there are some simple rules that hold about getting the "best" price that can beat the airlines strikes me as wishful thinking. If someone looks back over a year of prices there must be definition be a day which on average had the best price, an advance purchase period that had on average the best price. But even then it didn't apply to every flight. Nor are such calculations stable year to year.
Google flights and other sites will show what the average fare has been lately, although with Covid the past 2 years probably aren't reliable time periods. As for inflation and fuel prices, your fears are reasonable. I don't think anyone knows what will happen. Lots of predictions and some are bound to be right, but you can't identify which ones those are!
If you book now some airlines still have the flexible cancellation in place if you pay enough. This would be good for you as you are looking to book in advance, and chances fares for flexible cancellation will be considerably lower than they will be in a few months.
Booking now will also give you time to plan and something to look forward to.
