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Last word on best time to buy flight tickets to Europe, from Expedia

Posted by (Bainbridge Island) on

At least until someone else comes up with a study.

http://viewfinder.expedia.com/img/STOR-23513_White_paper.pdf

For international flights, the study concluded that the lowest price is 171 daysout (about six months), which pretty much throws water on the two-month"sweet spot" theorytoutedpreviously by someone here.

But if you look at the graphs, prices are fairly consistent from 300 days out to almost 100 days, with a slight downward trend from 300 to 171, then easing back up to the 100-day mark. After that the price takes off---upward, steeply. There is a tiny little blip of a dip right before the day of the flight, but it is nowhere near the lows six months earlier.

What I found more interesting is that they confirmed what I have observed with my own flight research---it is cheaper to fly to Europe on Thursday and return on a Monday. One can save as much as 20% over travel on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. For most of us that means taking an extra three days off work---not always possible.

I didn't read all of it so don't know what else it says.

Posted by
2858 posts

There is currently a sale going on at Lufthansa (we received e-mail notification), extended now through July 14 and they may well extend it again, for flights leaving by October 24. These prices show only on Lufthansa's site, i did not see them showing on other sites, including ITA-Matrix/Google. In checking this, I also discovered sale prices on the BA and USAir sites, at least for the USAir flights that shared with BA. Not sure how long these will last, but we found this good for spring 2016 departure (e.g. PHL->LHR, return DUB->PHL for $773).

With these also generally found that putting both flights between Monday and Wednesday yielded the same fares. Playing with the USAIr low-fare finder, it seems that leaving any day before April 1 gives the same $813 for a Philly-London round-trip, no matter what day is selected for the return.

Posted by
3522 posts

Your results may vary greatly from what that study shows. :-)

What I am seeing in my own travels does not agree with what was published in that document. Since the document was funded by Expedia, we should all be careful about believing it without reservation.

I am flying to Italy the end of September returning mid October from a different city in Italy and I want to fly at least business class (yes, I know that makes the price higher than a simple coach fare returning from the same city). I have been looking at airfare weekly since January and it has constantly gone up for the options available for me with the number of flights having availability reducing considerably. What has changed is many airlines are just now showing available frequent flyer redemption tickets that previously had not been available. The only airline that showed a price reduction is Iceland Air and that was back in June and their price has remained constant since. I still hope that there will be a price break before long, but am quickly losing that hope.

Posted by
985 posts

I went ahead and bought tickets after my RS confirmation back this winter for a trip coming up this fall. Prices are now 1K and higher per person. That's a good chunk of change! I have already been through three schedule changes. The last change involved changing our tickets out of CDG for a different time and with those tickets the price was listed as 2K higher per person.

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