Who wouldn’t want to save money on flights? We all know that an airline’s goal is (like any business owner’s) profit. Nobody wants to be the one paying the highest price. So we spend hours and hours reading articles about flights, trying to outsmart the system as though we were trying to outwit a used-car salesman.
I’ve written before about how to find cheap flights, and even about the flight booking process. Today, though, I want to focus on a few persistent and inaccurate myths about booking flights that survive out of sheer inertia and lazy journalism.
There are plenty of articles offering “secret tips” that promise to save you thousands. For example: “Book your flight on a Tuesday during a blood moon while standing on one leg and you’ll get the cheapest flight possible!”
OK, that’s an exaggeration. But I read so many articles that are flat-out inaccurate and out of date. I used to push several of the myths listed below myself, but as one of our former presidents put it: “Only a fool never changes his mind.” Today I want to explain which “rules” are mere assumptions, so you don’t follow them, save yourself hours and still end up with a cheap ticket!
Myth no. 1: You should search in incognito mode
This is the worst and most widespread myth of all. It makes sense. We all know that every website in the world uses cookies to track our online activity (in good faith, of course). So why wouldn’t the airlines track us too? There’s a belief that airlines monitor our browsing habits and then push ticket prices up when they see us looking at the same route (or routes) over and over.
Plenty of sites advise you to use your browser’s incognito mode (CTRL + SHIFT + N) to avoid this. Turn off cookies, stop being tracked and beat the system, right?
Except that isn’t true at all.
There’s no evidence that airlines behave this way. Numerous studies by booking companies have shown no price differences when using incognito mode.
Flight prices simply change constantly. A study by CheapAir found that the average economy fare can change up to 3 times a day and an average of 49 times in total. Airlines use sophisticated software to change prices based on a range of factors.
On top of that, they place their inventory not only on their own websites but on hundreds of third-party sites too, so millions of people are looking at the same flights at any given moment. The system updates continuously based on ticket sales and demand. If you search for a flight and come back an hour later only to find the price has jumped, it’s easy to think it’s because the airline tracked your cookies. The reality is that there was probably only one ticket left at that price, and it has just been sold. That’s all!
After all, there are only so many seats on a plane. You simply can’t add more, which is why prices move.
📌 Are you getting ready for your next adventure? Don’t waste time searching for information. Create your own itinerary with Karel 2.0, a tool that will plan and recommend places tailored to your schedule and the area you’ve selected. 🙂 Let’s try it
Myth no. 2: It’s better to book on a Tuesday
There was a time when most airlines released their flight deals on a Tuesday, and that led other airlines to follow suit. That’s where the old saying about booking on a Tuesday comes from.
These days, as I mentioned above, airlines use dynamic pricing and artificial intelligence to change prices constantly. The algorithms take a range of factors into account: historical and current demand, the season, the itinerary, the level of competition from other airlines, the class of travel, timing, fuel prices, demand and so on.
So book your flight on whatever day you like, but if you can, fly midweek and out of season. The exceptions, of course, are airline promotions, holidays and other significant dates around the world.
Myth no. 3: There’s a perfect time to book
Just as there’s no perfect day of the week to buy a ticket, there’s no universal booking window either. Because fares are so volatile, the best time to book depends on a range of factors including seasonality, the destination (international vs. domestic in particular) and your own booking needs (if you want the widest choice of seats, ticket type and so on).
The perfect time to book is when you find a price you’re happy with. There are plenty of tools that can help you with that, from price alerts in flight search engines to membership sites for cheap flights.
Myth no. 4: Websites can predict prices
Websites that predict prices are only guessing based on historical fares. Don’t put too much weight on those predictions. The past is not prologue, and a sudden surge in demand, such as a concert or another event, can push a fare outside its historical range.
I like the price gauge on Google Flights because it shows me the general historical price range for that flight. But any website that says “hold off booking because prices will come down” is talking nonsense.
Flight prices are incredibly volatile. There are a limited number of seats on planes and dozens of variables – from overall economic conditions to the price of oil, competition from new low-cost airlines and the difficulty of predicting travel interest for a specific flight 11 months out. Nobody knows what the future holds. The recent pandemic is proof that modelling the future doesn’t work.
It’s important to distinguish between when it’s cheapest to travel and when it’s cheapest to book. We know a lot about when it’s usually cheapest to travel: from January to March and from September to November.
Myth no. 5: There’s one best booking website
Why do you see prices differing from site to site? Third-party online travel agencies (OTAs) like Expedia often buy tickets in bulk, and prices depend heavily on which booking class they bought (they usually buy the cheapest and most restrictive fares, which is why those flights are always non-changeable). And again, thousands of people can be booking at once, so as the cheaper seats disappear, prices go up!
That’s why, even though I like Skyscanner and Google Flights, I check plenty of other sites before actually booking. And even though I like them, remember: there is no single best website for flights.
Prices differ across all these platforms. That’s why you have to search several websites and metasearch engines.
There’s no single best booking website, only the best one at the moment you book.
Any article claiming to show you the “secret” of cheap flights is probably too good to be true – because if it worked that well, the airlines would have shut it down long ago. You can’t outsmart the airlines. You can only bend the system in your favour.
