

And you should also pay close attention to booking holiday flights early if you’re spending Christmas or Hanukkah in Jamaica. Having said that, the fares do still jump up in that last month before you plan to go. You don’t really have to scrutinize the calendar as closely when the fluctuations in price remain fairly small over the course of most of the time before your trip. The prime booking window is enormous as well – which frankly, is good news to travelers. On average, the cheapest flights to the Caribbean are found when you buy that tropical airline ticket a whopping 207 days in advance – nearly 7 months before you go. Prime Booking Window: 2 weeks to almost 6 months before departureīest time to buy: About 70 days from your travel date December is the most expensive month, so get your Christmas beach vacation booked stat! The airfares to our neighbors to the south are also trending slightly cheaper overall versus last year, translating to an average 3% savings on each ticket. flights (this has not always been the case in the past) – you can generally wait about 70 days out for the best fares to Mexico or Central American destinations.

Mexico and Central America were quite similar to domestic U.S. Least expensive days of week to fly: Tuesday and Wednesday Prime Booking Window: 3 weeks to about 5 months before departureīest time to buy: About 66 days from your travel date Flights to Canada are about 3% cheaper than they were last year on average, which is a modest savings but hey-we’ll take a modest savings over a modest increase any day! No big surprises that Canada’s warm summers see the most expensive airline tickets, with July being the most expensive month to visit, but still – the difference between July and October (the least expensive month) is relatively modest-about $64.

market – it’s best to buy your airline ticket to Canada 66 days in advance, on average. The Canadian market is very similar to the U.S.
#Zed medium fares how to
We’ll now review each region in more detail, and address how to approach buying a ticket to each destination, using a range of criteria as explained above: travelers heading to international regions: Here is a breakdown of the average number of days before departure that yields the lowest airline ticket price for U.S. Finally, we analyzed the days of the week to determine whether there was a price advantage to buying, or flying, on any particular day. We also looked at whether traveling in certain seasons will impact when you should buy your flights, and which travel months had the highest and lowest airline ticket prices for each region. Otherwise, use the prime booking window as a good estimate of when it will make the best sense to buy. At a very busy time for the destination – Oktoberfest in Munich, the Edinburgh Festival in Scotland, and Holi in India are just three examples that come to mind – you’ll want to buy in the early part of the prime booking window, or in some cases even earlier. Of course, the prime booking window is a generalization, and you should be aware of events like large festivals, international sports events, and major holidays. If price is most important, you should plan to purchase your flights within this range. The prime booking window is the range of days in which you are likely to see the lowest fares – the window where it’s generally not too early to get a good deal, but also not too late. We identified the best day to buy a ticket in the different regions around the world, and we identified the “prime booking window” for each region as well. For each trip, we studied all the possible days you could buy that airline ticket – to uncover when international flights have the lowest fares. These airfares covered more than 3,000 international markets. In our study, we reviewed a total of 917,000,000 airfares, including fares covering more than 1,000,000 international trips over the last year. But we also track international tickets, and this year we took a deeper dive into the international data to provide our customers with the most comprehensive insights we’ve ever shared. That’s where we come in.Įvery year, analyzes hundreds of millions of domestic and international airfares – and you can read about the results of our domestic When to Buy Flights study, where we show you the best time to buy a domestic flight. Knowing the best time to purchase a flight has turned into something like Russian roulette for travelers – if you don’t “win” a low fare, you can lose big and be left with a sense that there has to be a better way. It’s hardly a secret that airfares fluctuate a lot. UPDATE: This international Airfare Study has the most current information on the best time to buy cheap flights.
