Just looking at flights to canada, obv booking now for 2 months theyre 460ish each way. If i were to fly this week theyd be 200. Is this because its off peak and they were always this price or do they bang seats out cheap last minute?

So if i were to book a few days before and was flexible could i potentially save or will prices stay the same?

The only consistent way to get cheap flights is to book them as soon as possible, like on the day that they release the schedule for booking.
Beyond that, you’re in the lap of the gods. It might get cheaper; it might not! Just depends on demand but generally they’re likely to get progressively more expensive as the flight fills up.

Prices on scheduled flights will be very high last minute. The stories you hear about cheap last minute deals refer to chartered flights by holiday companies chartering planes to take their holidaymakers to Malaga or wherever.

That’s because seats on charters are a perishable commodity – once the plane’s taken off that’s it, all spare seats are dead money.

If you are an airline scheduling flights, you have a fixed cost in that you have to run the scheduled planes, and you have a certain number of passengers wanting to fly. So you massage your prices to even out demand as much as possible.

They have a nominal price for a flight, which you can book 12 months in advance or whatever it is. Then, as the flight date looms, if it’s getting full they raise the price and if it’s looking half empty they lower it. But it’s not in their interests to slash the prices shortly before the flight leaves because then everyone would wait til the last minute. And it’s really important to them to be able to plan ahead, so they really like to know how many people will be on the plane.

The only consistent way to get cheap flights is to book them as soon as possible

It’ll be average if you do that. In my experience the best way is to monitor constantly and see when a few airlines start to put their prices up – then book on the ones that haven’t, before they do!

OP – next week is low (or medium depending on where you are going in Canada I suppose) season, 2 months’ time is July which is obviously high season.

prices for july went up £40 today.

decisions decisions

I flew to Aus and booked less than a week in advance. Cost about 25% more than an advance ticket would have and I had to go via London.

Someone buy my IronHorse Sunday and I can book it today 🙂

Kayak has a useful feature where it tracks the price over time and gives you a guess of whether the prices are likely to go up or down in the next week and a confidence level.

Remember as well airline websites remember the cookies off your computer so push the price up, either wipe the cookies or look of a different computer.

That’s because seats on charters are a perishable commodity – once the plane’s taken off that’s it, all spare seats are dead money.

I think you’ll find empty seats on ANY plane is dead money.

In essence the price model for airlines used to be cheaper the closer the departure date but as a function of number of spare seats. Early booked seats also often had some degree of transfer.

Since low cost airlines, the business model changed to cheapest most-in-advance, but also rising as seats are taken up, and with very restricted transfer.

The way to get last minute cheap tickets is mostly from the ‘I can travel but don’t need to travel, and happy to go anywhere’ position – the way to get royally turned over is ‘I must travel to there, right now’!

I think you’ll find empty seats on ANY plane is dead money.

I don’t think it’s considered that way, from what I’ve heard – because if you don’t get on that particular scheduled flight there’ll be another one tomorrow. And the airline’s contracted to provide those flights anyway. Not so with charter flights.