is there an ultra-last minute price drop on long haul flights with regular (not low cost) airlines?
I am planning to fly from Germany to Vietnam.
Do standard airlines do ultra last minute price drops for long distance flights?
I.e. is it reasonable to wait until 1 to 3 days before the flight with booking to see a meaningful price drop e.g. 10%?
Best Answer
Each airline is free to apply the pricing policy they want, so the answer could vary greatly from airline to airline.
A quick search for a transatlantic flight for today gives me a minimum price of $1400, while I can book the same search for $465 with one month ahead.
Usually last-minute travellers are those who are in a hurry to fly, so they don't care much for prices as regular tourists do.
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Is it cheaper to buy a last-minute ticket at the airport?
If a person does go to the airport in an attempt to buy a last-minute plane ticket, they may find the ticket prices to be immensely higher than if they were to book online. Ultimately, there are no advantages to buying tickets directly at the airport.Can you just show up at the airport and get a cheap flight?
Can you simply show up at the airport without a ticket and expect to get somewhere for cheap? The short answer is no. Airlines no longer allow you to wait around at the counter in hopes of snagging a "standby flight" and filling the last seat of a departing flight.Are flights cheaper on Tuesdays?
According to the internet, the best day of the week to buy flights is a Tuesday. Apparently, this is due to airlines announcing deals on Monday evenings. By Tuesday at noon, other airlines are trying to match those deals. So Tuesday afternoons are the best time to hunt for reduced airfare.Why do long-haul low-cost airlines fail?
The global low-cost long-haul airline market has failed, especially in 2019. The failure contributed by the inability to attract sufficient demand by long-haul point-to- point services, lack of connecting passengers, or the lack of right business-class products.Best Cheap Flights Websites NOBODY is Talking About | How to Find Cheap Flights 2022
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Answer 2
Typically not, but you never know, so it doesn't hurt trying.
FRA<->HAN: starting on this Friday would be around $1000 (including the non-stop from Vietnam airlines). A month from now, the non-stop would be around $800. It can be as cheap as $350, but only with awkward routing: multiple stops and/or long layovers.
Answer 3
My research of various credible online sources, ticket aggregators, specialized blogs, The Guardian-level newspapers suggests following:
Last minute price drops are virtually non existent on long haul flights from Europe to Asia. Price drops are in a way "random" or unpredicatable (as opposed to 1990's where "last minute price hunting worked reliably).
I have observed 3 types of triggers for price drops:
First, as airline start to sell long haul flights cca 11 months ahead, they have specific sales targets during the lifecycle of a sale, so if they do not hit the sales mark at 6 month, they do a sale.
Second trigger of price reduction I know of comes from over-capacity on certain Asian routes during some periods of times, especially around major European holidays, during Asians do no seem to fly much.
Third is a new route "welcome" pricing.
In this particual case, my search for the connection started 2 months ahead, and in the mean time I have observed that this routes gets sold out quite readily, so instead of getting a last minute price drop I ended up paying more when I finally bought one week ahead. The flight got sold out soon after.
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