Prices for airline tickets vary by hundreds of dollars in a single day for exactly the same seat on the same flight. For business travelers and the corporations that book those flights, those price variations are largely inconsequential. But to individuals and families, those variations are the difference between a vacation at home and the opportunity to take a memorable trip.
Most airlines change their airfares on Wednesdays. Prices from Friday through the weekend and beginning of the week go up as business travelers and their agents begin buying. There is some question about the best time of day to buy. Some say the best prices are at 12:30 a.m., while others swear they get their best pricing at 6 p.m. The variation might stem from when airlines actually update their prices. Airlines like to fly with full airplanes, even if some passengers are paying much lower prices, so they might specify that up to 100 seats on a plane will sell for 50 percent off the highest price they will charge for seats on the same plane. To get the best fares, you might have to go to the websites of specific airlines. This is where they post their promotional pricing.
Most business travelers book their fares one to two weeks before the day they want to fly. Because those travelers can and will pay a premium, the airlines increase the prices for airfares during those last two weeks. Buy your tickets at least 21 days in advance, but not too far in advance. Watch the price during a period of four or five weeks and look for natural fluctuations in pricing.
Most business travelers want to leave Monday and return before Friday. Tourists prefer to leave on a Thursday or Friday and return on a Friday. To get the best prices, leave on a Tuesday and stay over the weekend. This gives you the lowest pricing available in almost every case.
If you really love to travel, and you don't much care where you go, you can get some amazing prices on last-minute airfares that will take you around the country or around the world. There are websites, such as lastminutetravel.com that specialize in these kinds of tickets.
Many airlines won't work with consolidators such as Travelocity.com or Orbitz.com, which means that they do not always offer the best airfares, though they might provide you with a wide range of prices and flights.
Because airfares vary dramatically and for so many reasons, rest assured that on every plane you'll ever fly on, someone will have paid far less than you. The key thing is to get tickets that you can afford that take you where you want to go. If you save a few hundred dollars on a domestic flight or $1,000 on an overseas flight, you might be that person in the plane who paid the least for a ticket.
