When Do Air Tickets Go On Sale?

Introduction The aviation industry is one of the most important sectors in the world, with many individuals opting for air transport than any other means of transport. Therefore, most travelers will have a desire to look for an opportunity to get cheap ticket prices. One of the most asked questions is when airlines come up with their flight schedules and make tickets available to the public for future travel. The answer to the question depends on several factors.

Domestic Flights Domestic flights within the United States have their schedules made available and seat availability 11 months before the travel date. That means if the client is planning to travel to be able to book a certain flight in June 2024, the flights could be released as early as July 2023. Of course, the inventory may be limited that far in advance, but seats do start opening up around 11 months in advance.

There are exceptions, though. Southwest Airlines usually only announces its flight schedules and the number of seats available for sale at most 6 months to the date of travel. JetBlue makes their seat and fares available for sale at around 10 months to the desired travel time. Therefore, for domestic flights, using the guideline of checking whether tickets are on sale at the airline’s website around 10–11 months before your planned travel date is the ideal moment when they should be on sale.

International Flights It is important to understand that international flights operate slightly differently. International flight schedules are usually released within a time frame ranging from 300 to 355 days before travel. But normally, a few seats are reserved that far in advance. It is a trend that a larger percentage of seats are sold at 180 days after the date of international travel.

So if you want to find a good deal, you should check for international flights 180 days before the travel date. After that, you should check it frequently in the following months, up to 90–60 days before departure and by this time, almost all the seats will be on sale. Award seats are usually released closer to 360 days before travel.

Differences Between Airlines As far as the other major domestic airlines are concerned, most of them have similar rules regarding when tickets can be bought. Alaska, American, Delta, and United have an average lead-time of 11 months domestic scheduling opening with the departure date.

However, for international flights, the schedules and the available seats for bookings will have a lot more differences between the different airlines. While U.S.-based airlines release schedule information about 330 days prior to the scheduled flights, some Asian and European airlines release schedules 300 days prior to the scheduled flights because their routes need to connect to multiple regions.

Best Time to Buy Most of the travel agents suggest that one should purchase the tickets 47 days before the domestic flights and 70 to 80 days before the international flights in order to avail the best prices. This is just a general rule of thumb, however. The truth is, airfares are in constant fluctuation and there are always updates being made. When to buy depends on the route, the season, the level of demand, and other factors.

It is always good to be flexible with either the date or the flight timings as well, if this is possible. Fares can even change dramatically from one day to the next. This means that what may be costly at one particular time could be cheap the following week. The best advices that I would give to a fellow colleague is to be on the lookout for sales and to be open-minded.

Ticket Release Timing When an airline announces the availability of their future flights, they do not put all the seats up for sale simultaneously. Airlines also apply dynamic pricing models to take into account supply and demand factors.

For the most popular routes during peak travel periods, they may initially offer a limited number of seats that are seen to gauge the response and then gradually increase the available inventory. The routes that are not as popular will typically have a lot of availability right from the beginning.

However, no matter what, as the day of departure approaches, the number of seats put up for sale increases. This is not usually advisable, however, if one intends to wait until 2 to 3 months to the travel date to book because options reduce as people take the cheapest fares when they are on offer.

Conclusion Sometimes, the tickets for the flight can be expensive, so one has to book the flight in advance. Some of the tips include subscribing to the fare alerts of your preferred airline, considering the previous fares for the same route, and checking again closer to the time of departure. Perhaps the most important of all is to be aware of when airlines publish their future flight and seating offer. And of course, flexibility is something that also cannot be underestimated!