We hear bad travel advice all the time (and we know you do too because many of our members write in about it). Many of these myths are outdated or just flat-out wrong, so we’re setting the record straight to keep you from making a costly mistake.
Myth #1: Tuesday is the best day to buy flights
This myth can take many different forms. Some say Tuesdays are the best day to score cheap flights; others say the best time is at 1pm. While these claims may have been true years ago, it’s malarkey these days.
In the early days of online flight booking, airlines used to manually post their new fares at a certain time of day each week, often Tuesdays at 1pm. With a limited number of cheap seats available, people started to catch on that Tuesday afternoons were the best time to book flights.
That’s no longer the case, and it hasn’t been for years. Nowadays, complex algorithms are updating airfare prices constantly and automatically, meaning fares can change daily, hourly, even by the minute. In 2000, airfare was stable; today, it’s extremely volatile.
If prices were at their lowest on Tuesdays, our team of travel experts would be working overtime that day. Instead, they’re finding amazing deals every day of the week—Monday to Sunday—at all hours of the day.
(The claim that you can find the cheapest flights on August 23—National Cheap Flight Day—is also a myth.)
Myth #2: You should clear your cookies when searching for flights
We’ve all heard it at some point: The airlines are tracking your flight searches, and if they see you go back and do the same search again, they’ll raise the prices. If this was true, we’d have a much harder time finding deals. But we’re not.
Airline and OTA websites do typically access your IP address, but they do that in order to provide accurate location-related information like language and currency.
If you see a higher price on your second search, several factors could be at play. First, prices fluctuate; it’s possible that the price simply increased between searches. Also, a price is often only good for a certain number of seats. Some OTAs will show a message like “only 2 tickets left at this price.” Once those tickets are gone, the price rises to the next bracket.
If you’re searching on an OTA, it’s also possible that the first price you saw expired but the OTA hadn’t updated its prices. OTAs are like middlemen between consumers and airlines; sometimes when an airline updates its prices, it can take some time for the OTA to reflect those changes.
When you’re shopping for flights and the price increases on your second search, it’s simply a coincidence or lagging price update, not an intentional move to get more money from you.
Myth #3: Airfare gets cheaper at the last minute
How many times have you heard: Wait until the last day or two to book flights, and you’ll get a deal. Or, you could show up at the airport just before the flight and fly standby. After all, when a plane door closes, empty seats are wasted, so airlines slash the price to fill unsold seats.
While this may have worked long ago, airfare pricing has changed a lot in the past few decades. The advice isn’t just outdated, it could cost you hundreds of dollars.
In actuality, an unsold seat nearing takeoff soars in price. To understand why, think about the two different types of travelers.
First, there are leisure travelers, people who want to go on vacation. They care about price and tend to plan months in advance. Then, there are business travelers. They often don’t know their plans until the last minute, and since the company is footing the bill, they aren’t as price sensitive. Airlines know they can charge a bundle for these tickets—and they do.
There’s always an exception, and in this case, it’s flights on budget airlines like Frontier and Spirit. Budget carriers occasionally have good deals on last-minute flights. They tend to fly at less convenient times, and they don't have many flights or disruption agreements with other airlines, meaning if a flight gets canceled, they can’t put you on a flight with another airline.
As a result, far fewer business people fly these airlines, so they don’t have the leverage to raise prices at the last minute. Instead, they’re more likely to offer last-minute deals. But remember, these are the exceptions. In most cases, waiting until the last minute won’t save you money.
Myth #4: Overselling flights is a bad thing
Say there’s a flight that holds 100 people. Using past data, the airline predicts that up to eight passengers won't show up—they missed an alarm or connection, or decided to no longer fly. Rather than sell 100 tickets, the airline tries to sell 108 tickets, hoping that 100 people show up to fly. This allows the plane to fly as close to capacity as possible, maximizing profit.
If airlines routinely sent out flights half full, they’d either have to charge more for seats or cut the frequency of flights, meaning fewer—and costlier—options for travelers. By ensuring each flight carries as many people as possible, airlines can afford to offer lower prices.
Usually airlines are pretty good at this. But sometimes their prediction is wrong and they end up with more passengers than seats.
If you have a flexible travel schedule, an overbooked flight can actually be a gift from the travel overlords. Airlines start by offering vouchers in the hundreds or even thousands of dollars to volunteers who can take a different flight.
In the rare event they don’t get enough volunteers, they bump a passenger to another flight. Under federal law, if getting bumped delays you by more than an hour, the airline owes you up to $1,350 (based on the length of the delay and one-way price of the ticket). While they’ll typically offer a voucher, you can demand to get the compensation in cash.
Every airline approaches bumping passengers differently—status, fare class, order of check-in, and ticket cost may all be determining factors. So if you’re a frequent flyer in a premium class, you may be less likely to get bumped, while someone in basic economy who checked in at the last minute might be more likely to get bumped.
The DOT puts your chances of being bumped involuntarily at 1 in 67,000 passengers. Given that overselling helps keep fares low, these aren’t such bad odds.
Myth #5: Advertised fare sales offer the best deals
It’s common these days to see airlines advertising sales, with promises of amazing prices. Before you get too excited, consider that when an airline advertises a sale, its primary goal is to generate marketing buzz. They may lower the price on a few seats for a short period of time, but they’re not offering tons of tickets at a deep discount.
In fact, it’s the unadvertised sales that are goldmines. Here’s why.
When an airline quietly drops prices (aka an unadvertised sale), they have more control. By doing it on the down-low, they can lower prices at a moment’s notice—like if they have extra inventory to offload or if they see a competitor drop their prices.
They can watch how many seats are being scooped up and how competitor airlines are reacting. Plus, they can end the secret sale anytime because they’re not running a whole advertising campaign around it. That’s why unadvertised sales tend not to last long.
General rule of thumb: The better the deal, the shorter it lasts.
For example, sometimes airlines accidentally discount a fare by much more than they mean to. It's called a mistake fare, and the savings can be huge, like Chicago to Quito for $183 roundtrip, or business class from LA to Bali for $670 roundtrip.
While there’s no harm in checking out the prices of an advertised fare sale, remember that in most cases you can snag a much cheaper flight if it’s unadvertised. And if you wait to book until you see one of these official sales pop up, you could miss out on an amazing deal.
Published September 19, 2024
Last updated September 19, 2024
