How long is too long to book a flight?

It won't do you any good to book further than 6 months in advance – there's no “early bird” benefit to flight booking. In fact, most airlines don't even open their booking window until about 11 months before the flight date. The sooner you try to book an international flight, the more you'll pay for your ticket.



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The bottom line The short answer is that it's mostly around 11 months, though a number of factors can influence that. You should keep in mind that advance booking dates can vary depending on a number of factors, such as whether you plan to pay cash or use miles and points to book your ticket.

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Timing plays an important part. Specifically, plane tickets usually don't get cheaper closer to the departure date. Instead, flights tend to be the most inexpensive when you book between four months and three weeks before your departure date.

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Tuesdays and Wednesdays are the cheapest days to fly domestically. The cheapest days to depart if you're flying within the U.S. are midweek — generally Tuesday or Wednesday. For economy tickets, Tuesdays are about 24% lower than peak prices on Sundays, which translates to savings of about $85 per ticket.

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More specifically, Tuesday at about 15:00 eastern time. This is because many airlines release weekly sales early on Tuesday, which creates competition between airlines to match prices.

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A good rule of thumb is to start looking roughly 6 months before your specific travel dates, and not wait much later than 3 months before you're planning to get into the skies.

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In our experience, while fantastic deals can pop up at any time, the best time to book a flight (what we call the Goldilocks Window) is 1–3 months ahead for domestic travel and 2–8 months ahead for international travel—unless your trip is around a popular holiday or peak travel time, or you have very specific travel ...

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In our experience, while fantastic deals can pop up at any time, the best time to book a flight (what we call the Goldilocks Window) is 1–3 months ahead for domestic travel and 2–8 months ahead for international travel—unless your trip is around a popular holiday or peak travel time, or you have very specific travel ...

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The bottom line The short answer is that it's mostly around 11 months, though a number of factors can influence that. You should keep in mind that advance booking dates can vary depending on a number of factors, such as whether you plan to pay cash or use miles and points to book your ticket.

MORE DETAILS

Timing plays an important part. Specifically, plane tickets usually don't get cheaper closer to the departure date. Instead, flights tend to be the most inexpensive when you book between four months and three weeks before your departure date.

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Generally, you should book domestic flights one to four months in advance. For international flights, you should book at least six months in advance. You'll want to give yourself more time for research for the latter than when traveling on domestic itineraries.

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A new study says the cheapest domestic airfares can be booked six weeks before a flight. The typical savings is 6 percent off the overall average ticket price during the four months prior to departure.

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How far in advance should you book flights? Passengers pay the lowest price, around 6% below the average fare, if they buy their tickets six weeks before their flight. That's the golden rule thousands of travel blogs and articles swear by.

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At midnight, fewer people travel and there is low last-minute reservation so to fill them, they release multiple offers. With these discounts, you can set aside some amount.

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Generally, Tuesday, Wednesday and Saturday are the cheapest days to fly, while Fridays and Sundays are pricier, according to travel deal site FareCompare. Leisure travelers tend to fly on the weekends, either starting their vacations on Friday or taking a long weekend Friday to Sunday.

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Is there a cheapest month to fly? If you're looking for a bargain month to travel, February is your best bet. Flights in January closely follow February for being most affordable. At the other end of the spectrum, December and July are the first and second most expensive months to travel, on average.

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In the early days of online flight booking, airlines used to manually post their updated prices at a certain time of day each week. This led to the rise of the myth that the cheapest time to book a flight was on Tuesday (and specifically at 3am, many claimed).

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“Historically, Tuesdays were the cheapest day to book flights,” says Laura Lindsay, global travel trends expert for trip-booking website Skyscanner. “This was broadly true prepandemic as seasonality and even weekly pricing cycles were more predictable. However, this is no longer a hard and fast rule.”

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