Finding the Cheapest Flight
Our popular flight update report has now been running since the 4th March 2009. We've analysed thousands of flights over that period, all to give you the best chance of booking a flight at the right time. Now we can use this data to try to answer the question: "When is the best (cheapest) time to book my flight to Bodrum".
For this, we're going to look at three key questions:
1. "Which is the cheapest month to travel in?"
2. "Which is the cheapest airport to fly from?"
3. "How long before my flight should I book my flight?"
About the Data
For our report, we will be using all the data we have collected for all flights between our 18 tracked airports and Bodrum during 2010. This means we're using information collected from April 2009 (when the first 2010 flights went for sale), through to the 15th December 2010. This gives us a total of 2,567 prices - don't forget that each one of these 2,567 prices represents only the cheapest flight (of many) in that particular report period for a particular airport.Which is the cheapest month to travel in?
Our first question to answer is an interesting one. Although many of you will be limited to when you can travel, for those of you with greater flexibility, it's important to know when you can travel at the cheapest. It's also interesting to look for winter bargains, and to see exactly how expensive things are at peak holiday times. The graph below shows our findings. The green and red lines highlight the variance of the prices we found - from the minimum price found flights (in green), to the maximum price found (shown in red). The blue diamonds are the most important aspect of the graph and show the "average". Any flights found below the figure indicated by the blue diamond should be regarded as good value.
Important note about averages and maximums: Before we look at the graph, a reminder that this is a graph based on our reports which track the cheapest flights only, so when we say that the most expensive, or maximum flight found was xyz, we're actually talking about the most expensive "cheapest" flight. We are not saying that xyz is the most expensive flight in that period.
For example, if we look at a peak month such as August, we can see that the minimum 'cheapest' flight was just £115, the maximum 'cheapest' flight was £353, and the average of all August 'cheapest' flights was £223. With this in mind we can recommend that any return August flight below the £223 mark can be regarded as good value.
Which is the cheapest airport to fly from?
Next, which airport. Again some of you will be limited by which airport you can use, but for others, considerable savings can be made by carefully selecting your airport. Using our data, we have plotted an average (cheapest) price for 2010 flights for each airport. There aren't too many surprises here, with Gatwick consistently being the cheapest airport, with an average £22 saving over flights from 2nd place Stansted, and a massive £100 saving over flights from last place Dublin.
How long before my flight should I book my flight?
So, onto our trickiest question. Is it best to book flights as soon as possible, or is it better to leave it until the last minute? Let's try to find out.
We took our 2,567 flight prices, and looked at each one to determine how long before travel they were found. For example, a flight found in January 2010 for a travel in May 2010 would be regarded as "5 Months" before travel. The results were quite interesting; clearly showing that flights booked roughly a year before travel were a huge 30% more expensive than if you booked the flight 4 months before travel. It's hard to give any good advice here as there are many variables to consider when booking a flight; but this clearly shows a compelling reason not too book a flight more than 9 months before travel.
In Summary
OK, so here's a summary of our advice to find the cheapest flight, based on the findings above:
- When to go:
- Of course this is subjective, but it's interesting that there are many bargains throughout the year, but the "shoulder" months of May, June, and October probably represent good options.
- When to book:
- Try to book 4 or 5 months before travel; certainly no more than 9 months before travel.
- Where to fly from:
- If you can, try not to dismiss further afield airports, a longer train or coach journey (booked in advance) could save you money.
Generally though, there's no magic formula, however we have put together this price guide which you can use to quickly give you an idea whether a price you have found is good or not. Once you have found a price to compare, simply identify the relevant travel month on the left, then follow the corresponding colour bar to the right, if the price you have found is in the green or yellow, it's a very good price, if it's in the red, it's not such a bargain.
