FRIDAY is the worst day of the week to buy a plane ticket
and should be avoided at all costs, a comprehensive study of air fares has
revealed.
Industry analysts said that tickets bought on a Friday were
13 per cent more expensive than those bought on a Sunday.
Experts said that the weekend was the best time to book your
holidays and that you should ignore flash sales that pop up in the week.
In the past the advice was to book plane tickets on a
Tuesday because you were most likely to catch a sale.
The thinking was that airline executives came into work
Monday, looked at the weekend sales and tried to offload the remaining seats on
Tuesday.
But according to Greg Schulze at Expedia, things have now
changed.
The online travel agency and Airlines Reporting Corp, which
processes tickets booked through travel agencies, studied hundreds of millions
of tickets bought in the last 12 months around the world to see the new trends.
Mr Schulze said that there was no clear single day to find
the cheapest deal for all fights.
However flying to most areas of the world, the cheapest
tickets were sold on Saturday or Sunday.
Mr Schulze said that the reason Fridays are so expensive is
because airlines launch price hikes then and have already run out of cheap
seats.
Airlines are now posting their best deals on weekends
because they know that price-conscious consumers will grab them.
On the weekend there are also no business travellers looking
to get last minute fares which crowds the market.
Mr Schulze said: 'I personally would shop the weekend and
the beginning of the week and avoid Friday'.
Mid-week sales are pointless because they have too many
restrictions and often involve flights at odd hours.
Airlines are also increasingly using social media to target
a specific group of people via social media, or just tweaking prices a bit.
Mr Schulze said: 'Fare sales as they used to be are few and
far between. (Now) airlines are constantly making adjustments up and down'.
The study also found that air fares around the world were
eight per cent lower in October than the same time last year.
The reason is that airlines have been adding to their fleets
and the increased competition, coupled with lower oil prices, had driven fares
down.
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