Air Travel Tips

Here are your latest air travel tips, starting with which days are cheapest. At the moment (early 2008) it seems that Tuesday is consistently the cheapest day to leave on a flight. After searching numerous airfare web sites for our recent trip to Michigan from here in Colorado, we finally purchased tickets for a Tuesday departure. This is common lately.

Check those days, in other words, and if you have a choice, leave on the day that gets you the cheapest flight. It will probably be a Tuesday. Wednesdays and Saturdays are the second and third best days at the moment. Here are some other air travel tips that will save you some cash.

Air Travel Tips - Flight Times

If you have some flexibility, try searching the prices for evening flights. These are often the cheapest. You may want to even check what it costs to leave a night earlier than you need to, because the savings may be far more than an extra night in a hotel.

Air Travel Tips - Advance Purchase

Of course you will often get a better deal with plane tickets purchased in advance. Airlines want to know what capacity they need to have ready. In other words, it is better for their bottom line if they can plan ahead, and so they will reward you for doing the same. But how far in advance?

Two weeks is the common cut-off point lately. There is a reason for this. Many business trips are planned on short notice, and the airlines know that business travelers don't have much of a choice but to pay whatever they ask. This means that once you are within 14 days of the departure date, you may have to pay the rates that are meant for this urgent business traffic.

On the other end of the timing spectrum is the long-range planning. Airlines don't know what their costs will be four months from now. Jet fuel prices can change dramatically in this timeframe. As a result, they generally charge higher prices for air travel booked further out than this. In general try to buy your tickets three months to two weeks before your departure date.

The exception to these "rules of thumb" are the last-minute deals that are sometimes available. The day before a flight, if half of the seats are unsold, the airline wants to get almost anything they can to fill them. If you have no required timeframe for your trip, you can watch for these deals and just leave when the best deal comes up.

Air Travel Tips - Alternate Airports

Check alternate airports to get the the cheapest fares. Of course, it isn't necessarily worth driving an extra two hours to save $50 on one ticket. On the other hand, if the savings is $200, or if their are four of you flying together, it can be very worthwhile. Also consider the parking fees for your vehicle to get the whole cost picture. It may be $140 for ten days at one airport, and only $60 at another.

Finally, for more of the latest air travel tips, get the book, Travel Tips And Secrets. It is available free, a chapter at a time by email, on our home page (use the link below), or as an immediate download at a very reasonable cost.