Which flights are less full?

Early morning flights have less runway traffic, planes ready to take off from the night before, and fewer planes already in the air.



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Most people don't like the time wake-up times required to hit the earliest flights out of the airport, so a “first flight of the day” oftentimes offers less packed airplanes as well as easy breezy airport concourses. As a bonus, the early morning flights almost always have the best on-time records.

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But all is not lost. There's no doubt that planes are very full these days, but contrary to what the gate agent or flight attendant says when trying to get you to gate check your luggage to your final destination, most flights aren't completely full — most still depart with at least one empty seat.

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We talk about this a lot in our Annual Airfare Study. The truth is that the mid-day flights on Tuesday and Wednesday are less popular, and therefore both less crowded and less expensive! We always recommend a mid-week flight for just these reasons.

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TSA is projecting to screen 2.6 million passengers on Tuesday, Nov. 21; 2.7 million passengers on Wednesday, Nov. 22 and 2.9 million passengers on Sunday, Nov. 26, which will likely be the busiest travel day.

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While it all comes down to your preferences, daytime flying has the upper hand when it comes to visibility. Because of the sunlight, any possible obstructions, such as rocks or mountains, are far easier to spot, making the likelihood of accidents much less and daytime flying the safer option by far.

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“The best time of day to fly is almost always very early in the morning,” said Phil Dengler, co-founder of The Vacationer. “Early morning flights are much less likely to get delayed or canceled than those taking place later in the day.

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A strategy that travelers have been trying for years to varying degrees of success is the middle seat trick — when checking in online, two people traveling together will each select the aisle and window seats in a three-seat row and hope that the middle seat remains open.

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Originally Answered: Can you sit in first class if seats are empty and ask nicely? Short answer: no. The airlines don't want to encourage passengers to buy cheap seats and then pester the flight attendants for an upgrade. They want First Class seats going only to the people who pay full price for them.

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Generally, the worst days of the week to fly domestically are Sunday, Monday, and Friday.

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Spirit. Like Frontier, Spirit has the skinniest rows of any American airline, with a seat pitch of 28 inches — and they don't recline. Spirit lagged at 8 out of 10 American airlines studied in the in The Points Guys' 2021 report.

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Here's the ranking of US airlines from MOST complaints in May 2022 to LEAST complaints in May 2022:
  • American Airlines (575 complaints)
  • United Airlines (400 complaints)
  • Frontier Airlines (301 complaints)
  • Delta Air Lines (281 complaints)
  • Spirit Airlines (269 complaints)
  • JetBlue Airways (244 complaints)


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Average domestic airfare price by day
  • Tuesdays and Wednesdays are the cheapest days to fly domestically.
  • Saturday and Monday flights can help you avoid the Sunday rush.
  • Wednesdays and Thursdays are the cheapest day to fly internationally.
  • Book one to three months in advance.
  • Set a price alert.


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Flights typically open for booking 331 days in advance, and from then until about 21 days before departure, the price is the least expensive you'll find — after which they raise ticket prices at 14 days, and again at seven days. Research shows that the sweet spot for finding low fares is 44 days before your flight.

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Tuesday Around Midnight is the Cheapest Time to Book
In general, flights were slightly cheaper at midnight earlier in the week (Monday through Wednesday). However, this is only applicable to about 1.6% of U.S. markets, meaning that it's not likely you'll find the same savings on your specific route.

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Time your booking right
“For domestic flights, if you're talking peak season, it's about three to seven months in advance,” he says. “For international flights — [it's] four to 10 months.”

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Early morning on-time performance is all thanks to the thin air traffic. As Forbes explained, airspace is less likely to be crowded in the morning, as all the previous days' flights have long landed. But as planes build up and wait for takeoff, air traffic controllers begin to delay departures and landings.

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In commercial aviation, a red-eye flight refers to a flight that departs at night and arrives the next morning, especially when the total flight time is insufficient for passengers to get a full night's sleep.

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