Flight tickets: buy two weeks before even during holiday seasons? | Hacker News Reader

Flight tickets: buy two weeks before even during holiday seasons?

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89 pointsjakub_g25 comments

While traditionally flights were cheaper when booked round trip and 21 days in advance, those requirements are often no longer required. I just did a month long search on ITA for one way flights from New York to Los Angeles. There are plenty of tickets for next Saturday (7 days from now) for $130. The round trip price is simply the two one way tickets added together.

Within the next 7 days, the price increases but not by much. You can travel anytime before Saturday for only $284 one way. Obviously if you want a refundable/changeable ticket the price is more expensive.

While this is only one example (and a domestic USA itinerary only) the point is that the days of requiring a round trip, with a Saturday night stay and 14 or 21 day advanced purchase are often no longer required.

> There are plenty of tickets for next Saturday (7 days from now) for $130.

> Within the next 7 days, the price increases but not by much. You can travel anytime before Saturday for only $284 one way.

I'm a little confused; aren't you basically saying that the price more than doubles ($130 each way to $284 each way)?

Yes, it doubles at 6 days and under, but my point is, it's neither 14 days nor 21 days for pre purchase, and no round trip is required. The "old" thinking about fares is no longer valid.

In China, as well as running the ticketing system and (previously, and now probably still effectively) all of the airports, the government heavily regulates pricing to maintain accessibility of air-based transport for the citizens. One results it that people frequently book same day or day before. It's not uncommon on major routes between large cities to just go to the airport, buy a same-day domestic flight, and fly immediately.

This is really cool, and it's how things should be.

I wonder if there are any unintended consequences though.

For instance, if everyone buys same day/ day before, what's availability like? Are there different classes of seating? Are there empty seats during slow times of the year? Does the government simply eat those costs?

I'm completely ignorant of how air travel works in China, and these are genuine questions.

Of course availability is not guaranteed immediately; but on major routes it's effectively guaranteed due to volume.

As for costs, the government is heavily involved in managing fuel prices, and no doubt effectively controls airport landing and service fees, though I'm not sure about other factors. (They certainly aren't mandating any form of edible in-flight food!)

At a former employer, two of my executives (CEO/MD) were former British Airlines management. The CEO made me aware that, in fact, governments almost always subsidise air travel; even of the famed 'most profitable route' (London to New York). I haven't gone and done the research but my ex-CEO had no motivation to lie about it; AFAIK this is just another example of some of the 'peons pay for riche' realities of our world. As my mother puts it elegantly; "life isn't fair". Ain't that the truth.

At least in China you don't get charged extra for not having long-term plans. Leaving Australia recently, I was forced to buy an onward ticket (that I never used) from the destination country, despite the destination country's consulate (that I'd visited the day before) telling me this was not required. This sort of thing is a western air travel industry scam, and costs far more than some government inefficiencies.

I think US perspectives in particular tend to be very pro-capitalism/free market, whereas there are actually some good low-hanging fruit to be had from intelligent and light-touch regulation.

Much like code, business processes come in flavours and each offer their own benefits. Open source would be preferable; we're not there yet.

> Leaving Australia recently, I was forced to buy an onward ticket (that I never used) from the destination country, despite the destination country's consulate (that I'd visited the day before) telling me this was not required. This sort of thing is a western air travel industry scam, and costs far more than some government inefficiencies.

It's happened to me too, but the employee at the airport was quite understanding and sold me a fully refundable ticket (they exist, although the price is obscene) - I just canceled it after landing. The problem for at least Japan is that legally the airlines are responsible for getting you out of the country if you overstay a visa and can't pay for a flight back home, so all airlines require that you already have the ticket back if you're coming for a short trip. Immigration itself doesn't really enforce it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airline_Deregulation_Act

It's possible that everything you don't like about the US airline market is a relic of exactly this kind of government planning.

Wow, that "bureaucratic complacency" is incredible!

People can usually buy same day as travel in the US, too. Some flights might be sold out, some fares may be higher... but others will still be quite low. It's just uncommon, if you know you'll be flying, because of the risks.

Are you suggesting there's no risk of finding either a higher price or no seats when waiting until the day of travel in China? If so, there may be a yield-management inefficiency where someone else is losing out, and seats are often going empty.

"There is a common story that airline ticket prices rise significantly if you buy them less than two weeks before departure. And that any time before that will yield standard prices."

Is that a "common story"? Because IME it's not true at all. Prices seem to rise fairly steadily from at least a couple of months before travel.

That all depends on a really lots of factors IMO, most notably: continent, the number of airlines competing on a given route, is it a high peak time (e.g. vacations, xmas, May period in some European countries when there are lots of possible "long weekends" due to national holidays).

In my experience on the route I'm flying (indirect European connection, only two airlines competing, not many connections each day), the price in time is growing kind of exponentially. The threshold for sudden change is about 2 months (i.e. the price difference between 2 and 4 months in advance is not huge, while 2 and 1 month it's bigger). Moreover buying ~10 months in advance is more expensive than say 3 months before.

My experience is the opposite, where booking way in advance will give you often the best deal, if you are using their special offers.

Most airlines have those special offers, where you can book a cheap flight within a specific date range for a huge discount.

I've been doing this for all the "big" holidays and usually ended up with a price that got me the second ticket almost for free, when compared to the normal flight prices.

However, this means you are planning the trip based on your flight dates and not the other way around, which of course doesn't work for almost all non-holiday trips.

Most customers who book way in advance are in one of two classes: really price-sensitive, or really time-sensitive. The airlines try to figure out which you are through the special offers. As such, they'll set the base rate higher than the 3-month out rate to catch some extra revenue from the time-sensitive people, and then have "special offers" to induce the price-sensitive people to book.

I think it is the conventional wisdom, which is a statement about people rather than reality. It's evidenced by the fact that I've heard it stated almost verbatim by at least two unrelated people. What they both had in common is that they were older and had never used Kayak.

Most fare classes that carry the cheapest fares require a minimum 14- or 21-day pre-purchase window. This kind of thinking is probably a legacy of many people calling travel agents--or the airline--and hearing those rules over a long period of time. The rules still exist but demand and technology are such that they're not all that important any more because the tickets will be sold or reclassified several times prior to the flight.

I never have a problem finding the right price so long as it is just 2 days in advance with ITA Matrix: http://matrix.itasoftware.com

I'm surprised it wasn't mentioned in this thread. Incredible value, even for international flight. I used it to book a day-before-Thanksgiving flight two or three days before and ended up with a ridiculously good deal on a non-stop coach flight.

That site doesn't seem at all useful in Europe -- it does not include "discount" airlines like EasyJet or Norwegian which are half the price of a BA or SAS ticket.

Perhaps they're not paying Google enough to appear in the search results.

This sites does include them: http://www.momondo.dk/

Didn't know neither of the pages. Thanks for sharing. I used to seek for flights with http://www.skyscanner.com (actually I just checked some European route in July on the those three pages and SkyScanner found the cheapest fare, with all pages including same airlines, but certainly it won't be like this always). I especially like the stay range option (instead of fixed dates) in the Matrix.

>> Perhaps they're not paying Google enough to appear in the search results.

Google owns ITA Matrix.

For the holidays I flew a nested fare. It was the cheapest way I could find to fly the itinerary I wanted.

The first ticket was: 11/20 SFO - MHT 12/30 BOS - SFO

And the second: 11/25 PVD - SFO 12/20 SFO - PVD

I don't fly regularly, and I'm not experienced at bargain hunting with respect to air travel. I'm not really sure what I'm looking at, but I'm thinking this means you bought four trips, sorted by date like this:

A : 11/20 : SFO - MHT

B : 11/25 : PVD - SFO

C : 12/20 : SFO - PVD

D : 12/30 : BOS - SFO

And you bought these in round-trip pairs, AD was one pair and BC was another pair. Which might be cheaper than buying AB and CD, depending on what's available, especially if the tickets are from different airlines.

Shouldn't those sites that compare a bunch of airlines have software that figures this out for you automatically?

Beware that nesting tickets to circumvent minimum stay requirements is almost certainly against fare rules.

For example, http://www.aa.com/i18nForward.do?p=/customerService/customer...

American specifically prohibits the practices commonly known as:

Back to Back Ticketing: The combination of two or more roundtrip excursion fares end to end for the purpose of circumventing minimum stay requirements.

And yes, there are automated algorithms to detect that (although both tickets would need to be on the same airline for those algorithms to work, and the fact that MHT/BOS/PVD are different airports may be enough to get around that in your case)

I flew the entire itinerary on United. I wouldn't have booked it with a single East Coast airport for fear of running afoul of a fare rule. In the future, I'll spread a nest itinerary over two carriers just to be sure.

I have to praise Cathay Pacific for their prices of a long-haul ticket (LHR->PER) which was purchased same day as travel. The ticket cost only 1.7x more than the cheapest advance fare. All the other airlines were at least 2-3x the cost of Cathay's. (They also held that seat while I arranged a visa - they were so awesome).

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