Air fare

[susgar]

Hi,
Are there certain days of the week that are better for searching for a flight? Any days that the fares are usually lower?
Thanks, Sue p.s. I have been a member now, for several years, but everytime I con't my membership, it still states I am a guest.

[MULTIZ321]

Susgar,

Go to this Tug link to learn how to change your status to Tug Member


Welcome to Tug!


Richard

[chellej]

I really like the kayak web site for trying to determine the best days to book airfare. THeir search features are nice too for specifiying the departure or arrival times

www.kayak.com

[zazz]

Hard to say. Depends on the airline, destination, or originating city. Sometimes you get the Tuesday-Thursday departures on Southwest and sometimes airlines will have cheap fares in Fridays with the infamous Saturday night stay.

I personally use the Orbitz flexible search to find specific days. Its gives you three options of which I use two for short or long stays:

Weekend trip - Searches Thu-Sat departures for Mon-Tue returns in a specific month.

Flexible Stays - Choose various trip lengths in any given 30-day period.

Prices include taxes. Big fan of this type of search. I used it to go to Germany for $375 all in for March and $195 All in to Vegas in February.

[camachinist]

IIRC, domestic fares load into the GDS 3 times per day. Historically, I do best with the morning load, upon which I get alerts around 8am PT. The fares typically load around 10am. Most of the mistake fares I've flown have been in the morning load.

A simple trick is to take the fare alerts from farecompare and use the time between publishing and loading to assess the fare buckets currently being sold in the desired market with the fare the alert is bringing to that market and work out routings based on allowable routings for similar fares already loaded. This is how I get in on new low fares, by having the parameters set up even before the fare becomes publicly available. I just leave it up on the airline web site, at the older price, refreshing until the new fare loads, then proceed to booking. Another variant is to snag whatever comes up, ticket, and then cancel what one doesn't need/want. This only works where the airline has a 24hour cancel period, like UA does.

With international itineraries, watch out for the YQ (fuel surcharge); it's pretty hefty these days. There are some unpublished ways of getting around the YQ using loopholes in internet booking sites, but they'll remain unpublished

Other posters have given good advice on selecting time/day of travel. Also, though they don't always show up in search results, forcing redeyes can open up pricing opportunities and, generally, redeyes are less packed and have more upgrade availability.

Happy hunting!

Pat