Many people delay until close to the flight time to buy tickets with the expectation that the airline will reduce the price deeply due to the remaining seats.
Here are the sharings of Scott Keyes, founder of Scott's Cheap Flights, a website dedicated to helping travelers buy cheap airline tickets, about the mistakes people often make when booking.
He believes that one of the worst things travelers ever do is wait until the last minute close to the flight time to buy, with the mentality that the airline may have excess seats and lower fares. . Waiting until the last minute to book a ticket for a discount doesn't get you a cheaper flight. Even tickets for flights close to departure time can be more expensive. The era of last-minute cheap flights no longer exists. Waiting can be a disaster.
According to Scott, most airlines don't sell tickets 12 months before departure. And if so, buying a plane ticket a year in advance is usually not a good price either.
"Next time you're on a plane and think about how much you've spent on your ticket, look at the person sitting next to you and guess how much they paid. Prices can vary widely," Scott says.
He explained that it is very normal for two airline tickets of two seats next to each other to have different prices. You can buy a round-trip flight for $500 the day before. And the next day, you can see the same seat, the ticket price is only 250 USD. Or when you see the price of 500 USD, you delay to buy and the next day, the price is 750 USD.
So how can we buy the best ticket price? According to Scott, any flight has a "golden hour" to buy cheap. It is a time that is not too far away, nor too close to your departure date. For domestic flights, it is recommended that you purchase one to three months in advance of travel. For international routes, the time to buy tickets is two to eight months in advance.
Many travelers decide to buy a ticket for their next vacation based on how much they spent on the last trip. Let's say you fly round-trip to Paris at the beginning of the year for $1,000. Then you want to visit this place again and find its price is 1,100 USD. This unchanged price will make many customers decide to order because they think this is a good price. But this is a mistake, says Scott, and you don't realize that there are plenty of other cheap flights out there all the time. You can find a similar ride for $600.
Similarly, many travelers are willing to buy higher-priced trips for fear that fares will continue to rise. This means travelers can miss out on better deals, says Scott.
His advice in this case is: do not rely on the ticket price of the previous trip as a reference for the next flight. Buy tickets at the "golden time" instead.
According to Scott, plane tickets are unlike anything else we normally buy. It does not have a fixed price like other products on the market. According to him, "fares are always especially volatile" and finding a good price deserves to be elevated to "art".
