Airlines' ticket prices can rise and fall from day to day. Conor Popeinvestigates whether there's a sure-fire way to track down the best deals
WHEN IS the best time to book flights - months in advance or hours before you leave for the airport or does it really make any difference? While conspiratorial internet whispers suggest huge savings can be made through the careful timing of your booking, professionals working in the industry are considerably more circumspect.
There are scores of specialist websites and travel-related discussion boards populated by planespotters who claim the best time to buy airline tickets is between midnight and 1am on a Wednesday morning, in the time zone of the airline's home city. Net wisdom has it that this is when operators' computer systems dump their reserved, but unbooked, cheaper seats. The worst time, meanwhile, is apparently any weekday between the prime booking hours of 1pm to 2pm and 6pm and 8pm when some canny airlines take advantage of people's well-established surfing habits to up their prices.
While fares can certainly be changed in real-time using automated processes, making such consumer unfriendly tweaking possible, industry sources are sceptical such pricing shifts are commonplace.
"It could be done, absolutely," Stephen Rice, the country manager of e-bookers says, "but I think the industry would suss any airline who was doing that very quickly."
Over the course of a fortnight up until yesterday, we checked a number of flights out of Ireland at various times throughout the day and night and were unable to establish any pattern which suggested that fares fell or climbed according to the time of day the bookings were made.
There are, however, price changes that are worth noting.
Earlier this summer a British travel magazine tracked flights from London to Marseille and found prices could plummet even in high season. Condé Naste Traveller reported that at the beginning of July a ticket on a British Airway's flight with a departure date of July 31st cost €141.
Prices fell by a third to just over €90 two weeks later before doubling and then falling to below €100 again over the course of the next week.
On July 25th seats cost €147 but 24 hours later prices climbed to €601 - as BA tried to sell its premium-class seats.
The study found a Ryanair flight to the same destination cost exactly the same on July 1st as it did on July 30th, but it noted that in the intervening period seat prices had fallen on three occasions to a low of €26 during one of the airline's zero fare promotions. Easyjet's prices, meanwhile, showed considerably less fluctuations and stayed static at €85 for more than three weeks before climbing twice ahead of departure.
We tracked a range of fares out of Ireland in early November with Aer Lingus and Ryanair in recent weeks. While they showed little movement in first couple of weeks, as the departure dates grew closer the prices began to move substantially - and not just in one direction either.
For two weeks from early October we followed the price of an Aer Lingus flight from Dublin to New York, departing on November 6th and returning a fortnight later. Prices edged up only fractionally - from €465.26 at the beginning of the month to €466.98 last Monday. By Tuesday afternoon, however, the fare had increased to €502.98 and by Thursday lunchtime, it had edged up to €503.95. The cost of flights with the same airline to Rome for the weekend of November 7th showed more movement and in four days in the middle of the month fares jumped from €166.87 to €190.87 before falling back last Tuesday to €158.87. On Thursday the price had climbed again to €170.87.
Ryanair flights from Dublin to Girona, near Barcelona, for the same weekend, meanwhile, remained static at €59.98, excluding taxes and fees, over two weeks in October before jumping by €20 to €79.98 last Tuesday.
Two days later, the price went in the opposite direction and ticket prices, again excluding taxes and charges, cost €20 less than they had done when we first went looking and were selling for €39.98.
According to e-booker's Stephen Rice pricing "is very complex and there is no easy way to describes how it works".
He says people "build careers based on yield management" and airlines can stand or fall on the effective management of their passenger loads.
For consumers the class system on airlines is limited to first, business and economy, but airlines have in excess of 15 classes with different price tags. Certain classes are priced lower with a view to attracting quick sales and airlines, which put seats on sale 11 months ahead of departure, can see prices on certain flights fall dramatically and unexpectedly if, close to a departure date, a block booking of a certain cheap class of seat is cancelled by a tour operator.
Prices can also be changed in real-time as demand suddenly picks up or drops off.
"You really have got a moving target, it's a beast of a thing," Rice says. "The best rule of thumb is to book as far in advance as you can but it is not always the case that that will work out cheapest so it is always important to shop around."
Ciara Corcoran of the Specialist Holidays Group, which arranges holidays to the US and Far East, agrees.
"There isn't really a rule of thumb but, personally speaking, I would tend to book early. However it is worth keeping an eye out for deals. There are some great offers out there, the market is so turbulent right now."
Canny consumers should take to the web for help with their search for cheaper flights. Online booking services such as www.skyscanner.net and www.travelocity.com have fare alert systems in place which allows you to specify a flight and your price and they will notify you if the price ever drops below that rate. While they do work to a point, they rarely beat your own perseverance.
Five tips for finding cheaper holidays
1 Don't panicIf you're travelling alone or as part of a relaxed couple to a destination well served by flights from multiple carriers, don't rush your booking: a better deal is probably just around the corner - and if not you can always go the following week.
2 PanicIf, on the other hand, you're booking a family holiday, book early. Last-minute deals are almost unheard of for flights or packages for families to popular, child-friendly destinations, particularly in July and August or during midterm breaks.
3 Shop aroundDon't tie yourself to the Ryanair and Aer Lingus websites. Always check out other airlines that fly into and out of Ireland, in search of bargains. You can occasionally find deals with online agents, such as Ebookers.ie, Expedia.co.uk and Lastminute.com.
4 Cast the net widerFor long-haul flights, the lazy option is to confine searches to the UK hubs. Flights to South America, Asia and Africa in particular are often a lot cheaper from Paris, Amsterdam or Frankfurt. The KLM, Air France and Lufthansa sites are as easy to navigate as home-grown ones.
5 Work at itKeep an eye out for sales in these credit-crunching times. Read the small ads in the newspapers, sign up to e-mail newsletters and alerts, and trawl the web for operators' late deals.