How to avoid the most common airfare booking mistakes.
I'm Rich Demiro. This is Rich on Tech Daily.
Happy Monday to you. Just got back.
From San Francisco, more specifically Petaluma. If you didn't hear over the weekend, I was filling in for Leo Laporte on his Tech Guy radio show, which is on a bunch of radio stations nationwide. Got to go up to the Twit studios to do that and it was a blast. So if you didn't hear that over the weekend, I'll post the audio.
From the show in today's show notes.
All Right, now, let's talk about travel.
This is one of my favorite topics booking airfare because I'm always searching for a fair whether it's to go home back to New Jersey where I'm from, somewhere on vacation or just dreaming most of the time, or somewhere for business.
And Hopper is one of the tools that I love to use.
This is an app that kind of analyzes billions of daily flight searches fifteen billion, they say a day, and they analyze all this stuff to help give you the best information when it comes to booking airfare.
And what they really do is give you perspective.
On an airfare. So let's say you're traveling to Hawaii. You find an airfare of five hundred dollars, they're going to tell you if that's a good deal based on the dates and times you're going, because sometimes airfares are just more expensive, and they have that historical data to let you know.
So they say they looked at all this stuff.
And found the most common booking mistakes, and you could be losing out as much as five hundred and seventy one dollars on domestic trips wow, and a whopping nineteen hundred and sixty one dollars on international trips.
So here are their costliest mistakes.
Number one, you're an impulse bier. Average cost forty six dollars on domestic one thirty nine on international. Hopper found that two out of three ticket prices will drop at some point within twenty four hours of the original search or booking, so they say it pays to wait, which is interesting because most of the time, when you find a fair, you think that it's going to go up immediately because you just found it and it's in your browser.
But apparently that's not the case, and Hopper also says keep in mind, most major carriers in the US allow you to cancel your booking within twenty four hours of purchase for free. Now, yes, that is true, but I will tell you my experience with United Airlines because I did take advantage of that one time.
And here's what happened.
They canceled the flight, but they did not automatically refund me the fair so it kind of stayed in the system as a credit and I was like, no, no, no, I want my money back, and so I had to call and get that back.
So just keep that in mind.
Your experience could vary depending on the airline that you're using. But I'm just telling you that so you know, all right. Number two costliest mistake. You're not checking alternate airports. Average costs thirty two bucks domestic, ninety nine dollars international. So they say, if there's an alternate airport, you can save an average of ten percent.
And let's just look at the LA Area.
You've got Lax, you've got Burbank, you've got Ontario, you've got Long Beach, lots of different airports that you can fly into, and depending on where you live, one of these might even be more convenient. But again, if you're open to these things, you could save some cash. Number three, you're not being.
Flexible with dates.
They say sixty five dollars on domestic, one ninety eight on international, and that is true. In general, Flying on Friday is going to cost you twenty percent more than flying on the cheapest day. In general, Saturday night days are going to cost you four percent more. And let's face it, if you're going on a weekend trip, everyone wants to go on Friday.
Return on Sunday.
Tuesday usually the cheapest day to fly, not necessarily the cheapest day of book though, so keep that in mind.
You have to be flexible with your dates. And I've run into this all the time.
Your kids have certain dates off for spring break, or a couple days off during the week because of a school program or the teachers are out, and those are the best days to fly for you personally. But if you extend it a day on either side, you might save a lot more money.
All right. Number four, you're booking too late.
Average cost one hundred and thirty nine dollars on domestic, five twenty nine on international. Hopper says, gone are the days when you could land a last minute deal because the airline discus they had spare seats.
Now this is all done by.
Computers, so clearly algorithms are at play here. They're making sure that every plane is sold out or even over sold. This really comes into play whether you're looking at business or leisure routes. So for instance, business routes, the best time to buy is three months before departure. When it comes to consumer routes, it's actually better to buy about a month in advance of departure. And finally, number five,
you're booking too early. So again you don't want a book too late, but you don't want to book too early. So airlines put their flights on sale eleven months before departure. But according to Hopper's research, you don't really find any deals until about one hundred and fifty days prior to take off. That's about five months before departure. So if you book more than six months ahead, that can actually
cost you. Because the airlines are setting their prices conservatively, all those people that are booking early, they're sort of paying the most. And I will just tell you from what I've noticed in tracking prices, they go up and down almost every day and for instance, a flight I was tracking from Lax to Newark to go home, it was five p sixty, then three eighty the next day, then four forty two, then five forty seven.
So it goes up and down.
And that's the beauty of having an app like Hopper or using something like Google Flights to track your prices is that you can see, look, okay, this is a comfortable price for me. I'm just gonna go ahead and book it. So again, Hopper is a great app. Definitely check it out. Download it. Just go to my website richontech dot tv for the link.
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Thanks so much for listening. I'm Rich Demiro. I'll talk to you real soon.