This is The Best Time to Book Your Flight

31.10.2023 - 22:41 / afar.com / Scott Keyes

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. Typically, the best time to book a flight is one to two months out for domestic trips. And for international flights, the best time to book is six to eight months out. However, there are many factors that 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.

Along those lines, the variables that can make an airfare go higher or lower include:

Airline tickets typically go on sale up to a year out from the departure date, so that’s when the pricing roller coaster begins.
During the 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 lower aircraft availability, higher oil prices, and inflation) forced airfares to skyrocket.

But the good news is that airfares peaked in April 2023, and have been falling ever since.

In September 2023, airfares were down 13.4 percent compared with September 2022 and were 6.5 percent below September 2019 prices, according to the latest data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Consumer Price Index. And that downward trend has made airfares much more affordable—at least for now.

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, there are some ways to improve your chances of finding cheaper flights, according to experts who spend a lot of time analyzing flight data. Here’s what they recommend.

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 Going.com, tells AFAR. “Not too early, not too late—just right in the middle.”

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, you