Being in the airline business is not easy: airlines are litterally fighting over their customers. For consumers, the biggest challenge is to find an airline, which offers as cheap as possible flights, yet offering a certain level of service.

Alternatively to booking your flights with low cost carriers, there are three basic things you need to know about airline pricing… it might save you some money in future.

Don’t book a weekend flight

Most people tend to plan their vacation and holiday from saturday to saturday. As a result, the demand for flight tickets during and around the weekend is the highest, which also increases the price of weekend tickets. The same also applies during populair holidays. If you are looking for cheaper flight tickets, you may want to see if it is possible for you to fly somewhere during the week. How about tuesday, or wednesday?

Book well in advance

People booking well in advance are in a sense committing themselves to a certain flight and airline. Airlines like this, because it givest them a better chance to plan their seat occupation. As a result, if you book well in advance, flight tickets tend to be less expensive. An exception to this are last-minute tickets: these are tickets, which the airline was not able to sell, which are also sold at low prices, often only hours before take-off.

Be committed

Airlines apply different pricing models, depending on the commitment of the passenger. People who need to be flexible, and need the option to re-book or cancel a flight on short notice, will pay more for their ticket than people who do not.

An example

Consider the following example, in which I looked up a teturning flight for one adult from New York City to Frankfurt (Germany), Economy class:

• If I would have booked the flight for 12 december 209, returning one week later, the cheapest flight would have costed me at least 1032 USD, excluding extra charges.
• The same flight, booked on 16 March and returning one week later, would have costed me only 698 USD, excluding extra charges.

Yes, it does really cost some time to figure out what works best, but the extra money saved might well be worth it.

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