When Is the Best Time to Buy Plane Tickets?

As a travel editor, one of the questions I get asked the most when friends or family are booking flights is: If I wait, will the price go up or down?

The answer depends on when you’re looking and booking. Airline tickets typically go on sale up to a year before the departure date, so that’s when the pricing roller coaster begins. The best time to book a domestic flight tends to be between one to three months prior to departure. For international flights, the best time to book is two to eight months out. However, many factors can lead to an increase (or decrease) in the price of an airline ticket.

“Airline pricing models are complex,” explains Mark Crossey, U.S. travel expert with flight-tracking and booking tool Skyscanner. The strongest determinant for airfares, says Crossey, is demand.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, airfares were dramatically affected by the severe drop in demand, which resulted in an equally severe drop in prices. In the aftermath of the pandemic, however, travel rebounded with a vengeance, and that huge influx in demand (combined with other factors such as low aircraft availability, high oil prices, and inflation) forced airfares to skyrocket.

But the good news is that airfares peaked in 2023 and haven’t been so pricey since.

If you have your heart set on a specific destination or time frame, start tracking flights early to get a sense of the standard range. That way you’ll know a good deal when you see one—and can pounce when an attractive airfare pops up.

The best time to buy airline tickets is ultimately a combination of luck and strategy. While we can’t help too much with the luck part, we can at least try to help with the strategizing. Thankfully, experts who spend a lot of time analyzing flight data know ways to improve your chances of finding cheaper flights. Here’s what they recommend.

How far in advance should you book a flight to get the best deal?

The best time to book a flight is one to three months before your departure for domestic airline tickets and two to eight months prior for international flights.

“We call these the ‘Goldilocks windows,’” Scott Keyes, founder of flight deal tracking app Going, tells Afar. “Not too early, not too late—just right in the middle.”

The best time to book a flight

If you want to travel during the holidays, over spring break, during peak summer travel periods, or for a popular event such as Mardi Gras or a big music festival, book three to seven months out for domestic travel and four to 10 months out for international travel.

When it comes to how long before traveling you should book your airfare, there is no single perfect moment (e.g., exactly 60 days before your flight), but more of an ideal window or time frame, as mentioned above, during which you should be researching flights and ultimately committing to them before prices start to rise.

The best day of the week to buy airline tickets

Although you might have heard that flight prices are lower on Tuesdays, the general consensus these days is that there is no single day of the week to score good deals on airfares. Deals are doled out every day of the week.

According to Skyscanner’s Crossey, your chances are a bit better earlier in the week. “Flight prices typically go through a weekly cycle, meaning the lowest prices are made available earlier in the week, and the highest prices are offered later in the week,” says Crossey.

Cheapest day of the week to fly

Tuesday and Wednesday are typically the cheapest days to fly domestically, according to travel-booking site Hopper. For international travel, midweek is the cheapest time to fly. Hopper recommends departing earlier in the week (between Monday and Wednesday) and returning later in the week (between Tuesday and Thursday) for international flights.

What factors influence how high or low airfares will be?

Variables that can make an airfare go higher or lower include:

• The flight route: Do a lot of planes fly between the selected airports, or is service limited? If it’s the latter, it will be harder to find a good deal. If the route is more competitive, the airfares will be too.
• The time of year: Are you looking to travel during popular periods such as summer or the holidays? If so, the prices likely won’t come down the closer you get to the travel date.
• Special events: Is there a special event taking place, such as a festival, big sporting event, or conference? If that’s the case, then airfares likely won’t decrease much, if at all.
• The booking window: How far out it is from the time of travel? If it’s very far out, prices could still fluctuate quite a bit. The likelihood of a price drop decreases the closer you get to the flight.

How to find the best airfare deals

When searching for airfares, you can fiddle with your dates, filters, and other search tools that could help you land a more attractive flight price.

Explore different dates with a flight search tool

Plenty of flight search tools exist, but the one that’s often the most comprehensive (by our estimation) is Google Flights. Its best feature is the Calendar tool, which allows travelers to see the full range of airfares over the course of each month. Google Flights is a search tool—not a booking tool—so travelers use it to find the flights and airfares that work for them but then book directly with the airline.

Google Flights also recently developed a new tool that will let you know the cheapest time to book your flight. For a while now, Google has been letting users know whether airfares are low, typical, or high compared with historical averages. But more recently, the platform will let users know what time frames have traditionally been the cheapest for the flights they’re searching (as long as they’re flights and routes that Google has enough data on). So, for instance, it will let you know that the cheapest time to book similar trips is two months prior to departure, and whether you’re currently in the ideal booking period for the most affordable airfare. “Or you might learn that prices have usually dropped closer to take-off, so you decide to wait before booking,” Google said in a statement.

As useful as Google Flights is, it never hurts to cross-check against other sites like Kayak, Skyscanner, or Momondo.

If there’s a particular airline you know you want to book—say, because of a loyalty membership or because of preferred routes and service—you can (and should) also search directly with that carrier to get the full spread of options straight from the airline’s inventory.

Set an alert to track prices

Flight search sites like Google Flights and Kayak have a price-tracking tool that allows users to set an alert for when the price changes on a route of interest. This is a great option for stalking your flight for the best price.

Lock in a flight deal for 24 hours

For flights booked at least seven days or more prior to departure, the Department of Transportation requires that airlines flying within, into, or out of the United States allow customers to cancel without penalty within 24 hours. So, if you see a good airfare, you can always hold it for 24 hours while you look around a bit more or make a final decision on your travel plans.

Filter the search based on travel interests and needs

If you know you’re going to travel with checked luggage or only want to fly nonstop, you can filter your search to compare flights relevant to your needs.

You can filter your search by the number of stops, flight duration, airlines (handy for eliminating carriers you definitely do not want to fly with), and departure and arrival times. You can also filter by the number of bags you want to check, all of which helps travelers find the best deals that meet their specific needs. (For instance, I am often traveling with two small kids, so shorter flight times and fewer stops are more important to me than the absolute rock-bottom prices.)

You can (and probably should) search for more than one origin or destination airport to expand your options. Kayak, for example, offers the ability to automatically include additional airports within a given radius with the click of a button.

Explore cheap fares by destination

Google Flights has an Explore tool that allows users to enter their origin city and explore destinations within a given time frame—for example, a “one-week trip within the next six months.” This is great for just planting some idea seeds for upcoming travel. You can search flights to an entire region or the world to compare airfares from your home airport to a large swath of destinations.

Sign up for an airfare deal newsletter

Another useful way to find an airfare deal is to sign up for a deal newsletter such as Going.com and Dollar Flight Club. These services are constantly looking for amazing flight offers and inform their members as soon as great deals crop up. This is perfect for when you are still in the inspiration phase of trip planning.

Sign up for frequent flier programs

Members of airlines’ frequent flier programs will typically receive emails about the latest and greatest airfare sales. This is another way to nab a good deal.

Do flight prices go down at the last minute?

While there can be a fair amount of price fluctuation several months before travel, once you get within a few weeks of your flight, that airfare is very unlikely to come down.

The reality is that last-minute offers just don’t come around as often as travelers may think. Says Going spokesperson Katy Nastro, “More often than not airfare tends to go in the upward direction the closer you get to the date you’re looking to fly.”

If you do happen to spot a lower price on your flight, here’s how to rebook your flight after the price drops.