As if we didn’t suspect it all along, an analysis released on November 28 by travel search engine Kayak shows that 14% of Indian travellers booked their tickets less than a week before they travelled, and ended up paying up to 33% more for trips to some of the most-liked destinations of 2017. The data is based on searches run by Kayak users from January 1 to October 31, 2017, for travel between January 1 to December 31, 2018, comparing it with the corresponding period in the previous year. The number of visitors and searches has not been mentioned.
Before we go into the findings, a quick fact: flight search engines or aggregators (Momondo, Skyscanner, the more multi-purpose Kayak) are different from OTAs (online travel agencies such as MakeMyTrip, Yatra, Cleartrip, Expedia). The former search for deals across the latter, plus a multiplicity of sources that include the original service providers, and lead you to the sites where you make your purchase. Their recommendations depend on the OTAs and airlines they cover.
It’s worth keeping in mind that flight fare aggregators are good resources for understanding how the gargantuan and frenetic civil aviation market works worldwide, but I wouldn’t advise buying the fabulously cheap tickets from all the links to which they lead you. If a fare looks unbelievable, it probably is. I prefer buying my tickets from the airlines themselves for the most trustworthy reservations, refund rules and frequent flyer programmes.
Now, for what Kayak found in this latest review: the top three destinations favoured by Indian travellers were Bangkok (flights to which cost on average 18% more in the week before the date of journey), Dubai (22% more) and Bali (33% more; note that this data was tabulated before Mt Agung’s eruption). Other pricey last-minute destinations on their list are Goa (30% costlier tickets in the week running up to departure), Maldives (27% more), Port Blair (26% more) and Paris (28% more). The least such time-specific increase in average flight costs was to Singapore (13%).
Planning ahead is the answer to travelling more affordably of course, but how far ahead? This is where things get iffy, much as travel hacks would like to claim they have the answers. According to this latest analysis by Kayak, if you buy 51 weeks in advance — yes, almost a whole year — a saving of nearly half the ticket cost is possible. Skyscanner, on the other hand, admits that flight prices change all the time, and its analysis reads Indian civil aviation trends differently.
Skyscanner’s India analysis of June 2017 says the sweet spot for flights to Kuala Lumpur (35% less than the average cost), Bangkok (33% less), Europe (22%) and the US (18%) is 24 weeks prior to departure, but fares to Bali actually halved when purchased 25 weeks ahead (you would pay 27% more in the week before the trip). If tickets to Delhi are cheaper by 60% when booked 23 weeks in advance, you can fly to Srinagar for 47% less when the booking is done 16 weeks ahead of the trip.
Bewildering? Take a look at this: fares to Bangkok are 10% cheaper than average in November; Bali is similarly cheapest in April.
Although the number of visitors is not mentioned, the sample size for this survey by Skyscanner appears to be larger, because the results are based on the aggregator’s flight search data of Indian travellers between January 1, 2015, and December 31, 2016.
Buying cheap in highly developed civil aviation markets like the US follows more reliable trends, but only to some extent: a massive CheapAir.com review of more than 350 million airfares within and from/to the US, released in May 2017, found that “the early bird rarely gets the worm”. While excess capacity in some routes caused fares to drop closer to departure, airfares to Asia from the US were best found three months in advance. One finding common to India: the cheapest fare for a specific itinerary is snared not by the much-in-advance planner or his last-minute counterpart, but in between (for domestic travel in the US, too, the range is as wide as three weeks to 3.5 months).
A widely known thumb rule in these markets (not for India): airlines update cheap fares early on Tuesdays if they have a lot of empty seats coming up for their weekend flights, but rates rise again on Thursdays.
Finding the ideal deals takes considerable flexibility, time and effort, and miles of luck. When Skyscanner asked 1,000 Indian travellers if they knew the best time to book flights from India, the result of that survey, also released in June 2
Wingin’ it
For the best fares, cross-check across flight search engines.
Searching in the ‘incognito’ mode (Ctrl/Cmd + Shift + N) resets cookies, so a site can’t raise prices by reading your preferences. But the efficacy of this strategy depends on the website, because ‘incognito’ only means ‘don’t leave a trail’; a trail already left when operating in the ‘non-incognito’ mode can still be used by the website. Sites like Momondo and Skyscanner claim the absence of this bias.
Opting for connecting flights, flexible dates and smaller airports can save you money.
Sign up for airline newsletters to get information on introductory fares and flash sales in your inbox.
Sometimes, depending on the deals available, one-way tickets for the onward and return journeys to overseas destinations (and arriving at one city, returning by another) can work out cheaper than a round-trip booking, for example, when you are travelling in the Schengen region.
A too-good-to-be-true deal is just that — grab it before it goes away.