Scott's Cheap Flights ☀️ 🔄 ⛄ The flights you should be booking in the summer

From: Scott's Cheap Flights - Monday Jul 05, 2021 01:32 pm

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Many travelers don’t start thinking about summer flights until the summer, or winter flights until the winter. (Understandably!)

The problem is that summer is the most expensive time of year to book summer flights, and November/December is the toughest time to find a good winter holiday flight.

If you’ve got a cheap-flight-loving heart, the best strategy is, instead, to book during the opposite season.

🔁 Always book opposite season

It’s usually around May that I start getting asked how to find cheap summer flights.

I do all I can to help—I’m not a jerk!—but I generally have to bite my tongue on what I really want to say: you should have asked months ago.

If you only start thinking about summer flights once summer is almost here, your odds of getting a cheap flight are not great.

Instead, the best approach to getting cheap peak season flights is simple. Book opposite season.

Much like how swimsuits are cheaper in the winter and coats are cheaper in the summer, so too are summer flights generally cheaper when you book them in the winter.

So when you’re at your July 4th BBQ, that’s when you should start looking about winter holiday flights. And when you’re getting dolled up for that New Year’s ball, that’s when you should start looking about summer flights.

The reason why booking opposite season is a good strategy if you’re traveling in peak season? Because it falls within the Goldilocks Windows.

🥣 Goldilocks Windows

While there’s no cheapest day or time to book flights—“Tuesday at 1pm” is a myth—there are periods in advance of travel when cheap flights are most likely to pop up. I call these Goldilocks Windows.

If you’re traveling domestically, the Goldilocks Window for when you’re most likely to see a cheap flight is 1-3 months before flying. For international flights, it’s 2-8 months in advance.

But if you’re hoping to travel during a peak time like middle of summer or around New Year’s, you’ll need to add a few months. More like 3-6 months for domestic flights and 3-10 months for international.

🌍 Things may be a bit different this year

In normal times, “cheap last-minute flights” is an oxymoron. But as with many aspects of society, the pandemic has temporarily complicated airfare.

For reasons I get into more detail here, we’re seeing far more cheap last-minute flights to Europe than we would in a typical year.

But the perfect storm that’s enabling currently cheap last-minute Europe flights is unlikely to persist through next year. So if you’re hoping for a cheap summer 2022 flight, the advice still stands: book opposite season.

What do you think? Let us know on Twitter.

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Scott's Cheap Flights ☀️ 🔄 ⛄ The flights you should be booking in the summer