Lower flight prices: when it is best to book!

Lower flight prices: when it is best to book!

The opodo travel platform has carried out a comprehensive analysis of flight prices for 2024 and found that the time of booking has a major impact on ticket prices. At night, flight prices are often the lowest, which can lead to significant savings for travelers. For example, flights to the USA are cheapest at 2 a.m., with a price of around 530 euros. Flights to Japan are also particularly inexpensive at midnight, with a cost of 906 euros. Flights to Thailand can be booked at 3 a.m. for 818 euros, while popular European destinations such as Spain, Greece and France often offer the best offers at night, such as about 243 euros for flights to Spain.

More interesting price developments are shown on flights to Italy, which are the cheapest at 1 a.m. (239 euros). Flights to Turkey reach their low point at 4 a.m., here the price is 259 euros. So it becomes clear that travelers can strategically proceed when choosing the time of booking in order to save money. In addition to the time, however, the weekday also has a major impact on flight prices.

Optimal booking days for various travel destinations

The analysis of Opodo shows that Sunday is the best day of booking for many European travel destinations, including France, Poland, Switzerland and Denmark. Ideally, flights to Spain should be booked on Thursdays, while on the freestyle turns out to be favorable for Greece. For Italy, midwobs are the best booking days. Interestingly, Sunday is also advantageous for flights to Asia, with the exception for Thailand, where the bookings are cheaper on Mondays. If you want to travel to Japan, you should book your flights on Thursdays, and Thursday is also the cheapest day for flights to the USA. Sunday is ideal for Costa Rica, whereas Monday is a more expensive option. Monday is the best day for Colombia, while bookings are often more expensive on weekends.

summarized there is a clear picture: If you book your flights in a targeted manner at certain times and on optimal days of the week, you can save considerably and relieve your travel fund.

flight price search engines in comparison

In the course of the search for the best flight prices, the selection of the correct flight price search engine should also be considered. The German Society for Consumer Studies (DTGV) examined eleven different flight price search engines to determine the best offers and compare the portals. Well -known services such as Google Flights, Kayak and Skyscanner were tested. The analysis included 20 different flight scenarios from short, medium and long-haul flights.

The test results show that none of the platforms could consistently determine the cheapest price. Jetcost and flight.idealo.de were able to find the lowest price in 8 or 5 of 20 scenarios. Overall, the "cheapest" price of a portal was an average of 14% above the actually best price. As part of the study, it was also found that there were more than 5 euros in 8% of the flight searches. The greatest divergence was even 80 euros on a long -haul flight from Hamburg to Bangkok.

The recommendation is therefore to use several flight price search engines to find the best flight. According to the study, Flight.idealo.de was awarded the overall test winner with the grade "very good" (1.4), followed by Checkfelix ("good", 1.6) and Swoodoo ("good", 1,6). The providers in the categories prices & price transparency, search comfort and customer service were particularly strong In summary, it can be seen that both the optimal booking time and the choice of the right search engine are decisive to save money when flying.