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There are many sites where I can search for a particular flight with various date ranges and compare the prices.

But, say, I want to go from Warsaw to New York, or London, or anywhere else (the location is just an example). But I have 100% flexibility when I'll go. How can I check in which part of the year the flight prices on the given route tend to be the most attractive?

I'm aware the prices are very volatile, but if there's a general trend that the flights to London are cheapest in May, and to New York in October, it would greatly help me to start planning.

Danubian Sailor
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  • I suggest to reopen my question. Even if the linked question is very similar to mine, mine, in my humble opinion, have attracted better answers :) – Danubian Sailor Feb 13 '15 at 22:33
  • This question is poorly written and has attracted contradictory answers. It's best to keep the other one as the canonical question on this topic. – Relaxed Feb 13 '15 at 23:38

4 Answers4

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There's much, much more information on momondo.com on flight insights as they call it. You enter the route and click on that option, they graphically tell you all about what weeks of the year it would be the cheapest to do that trip, what day of the week is cheapest on average, what time of the day they'd suggest flying, the alternative airports if applicable, the cheapest airlines on average, and on top of that they show a pie chart on how much each of these factors affect the price.

enter image description here

downhand
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You can use Google Flights to perform such a search.

By clicking on the date icon (departure or return date) and then on the histogram icon, you can see how the prices vary during the year:

enter image description here

Saaru Lindestøkke
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  • Wow, that's nice! I haven't noticed you can click that thing :) It seems those are actual, and not historical prices, which makes it even more useful. – Danubian Sailor Feb 13 '15 at 09:53
  • That's a run-of-the-mill histogram of fares available at a given point in time, just like there is on ITA Matrix, Momondo and others. It has nothing to do with the question. – Relaxed Feb 13 '15 at 16:33
  • @Relaxed If I'm not mistaken Google is involved with ITA Matrix somehow, so yes, it is very much like it. However, at least 11 people, including the OP, tend to disagree with your last sentence, so I think we must be interpreting the question differently. – Saaru Lindestøkke Feb 13 '15 at 18:16
  • @BartArondson That's not quite what the OP wrote just above my own comment and that's difficult to reconcile with what he actually wrote in the question… Now if he finds this website nice, great, but that only underlies my point: The assumptions in the question are misguided. OTOH, the question you do address (how to visualize the cheapest price right now/find cheap fares when I am flexible) has been addressed on this site many times before. – Relaxed Feb 13 '15 at 18:17
  • @BartArondson Wel, more useful than what? I am not the OP but the only way I can make sense of this is as “more useful than what I was asking about”. The point is that there is nothing “statistical” about this, it's just a visualization of available fares. – Relaxed Feb 13 '15 at 18:21
  • Recently Google flight search added a new feature, you can see historical price changes of a saved itinerary. Select a flight in future, save it and in a few days you can see the price change graph in saved flights page (Star icon) – mdakin Feb 16 '15 at 01:41
  • @BartArondson it's working again now. – Cary Bondoc Nov 27 '15 at 00:15
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You approach might not completely make sense. How do you define those historical prices? The cheapest fare ever sold on the plane? The average price paid by people who took it? The cheapest fare available shortly before departure?

Since fares universally go up as a plane gets fuller and the departure date nears, average price is going to be higher for fully booked flights but that's trivial and not so relevant to your purpose. Maybe there was an ultra-cheap fare on that flight too and it simply sold earlier (it's also possible there wasn't but a simple average won't tell you that).

What about flexibility? If you are on a flight with many business travellers that don't pay for their tickets themselves and prefer flexible fares with lots of miles, the average price paid by all passengers on the plane will be higher but it does not mean that the cheapest available fare at any given time was more expensive.

Same thing for short-haul flights to large hubs. Sometimes, a person flying directly to a hub will pay more than someone else on the same flight who then connects to another flight. With some crazy routings and other tricks (cf. fuel dumping), you can even save money by going somewhere else and flying through your departure point to some other far away destination. What's the meaning of the average fare on this feeder flight?

Instead of looking at statistical trends or past data, you might be best served by checking what fares are available right not and booking the cheapest one you can find. See How can I do a "broad" search for flights? for tools to do that.

Community
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Relaxed
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    While definitely relevant to the question, your post doesn't seem to attempt to answer the question. However, it's also too long for a comment so I'm not sure what should be done about this. – Saaru Lindestøkke Feb 13 '15 at 14:12
  • All your concerns are real, but all of that factors contribute more or less in similar degree to all the prices, so still, if you just average everything, you'll get some trends, for example that February is cheaper then August, or Tuesday is cheaper than Friday. – Danubian Sailor Feb 13 '15 at 15:17
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    @BartArondson The question is “how can I?” and my answer is “you can't”. – Relaxed Feb 13 '15 at 16:24
  • @РСТȢѸФХѾЦЧШЩЪЫЬѢѤЮѦѪѨѬѠѺѮѰѲѴ A trend of what? You're not booking a random ticket for a random person with random fare conditions. For example, you don't need to get a “trend” or statistics on fare conditions, it's not an external factor or something caused by the season, you can just choose to get a flexible fare or not depending on your priorities. – Relaxed Feb 13 '15 at 16:28
  • For a highly stylized example of what I mean, let's say that all seats have fixed prices, cheaper ones get sold first and business traveller pay double for the flexibility. Now imagine that nobody flies in January (so you can still get the cheaper seats right before the flight), many business people fly in March (so on average the price paid will be much higher) and in July many people fly on holiday (so that the cheapest seats are booked well in advance). – Relaxed Feb 13 '15 at 16:29
  • Now, on average, March is going to look more expensive but you can still get a cheap (non-changeable) ticket if you want, it's just that the people who composed the sample are not like you. In my toy example, cheap tickets also exist in July so you can book them, but you need to do it in advance. The “trend” tells you nothing about the price available to you under some specific conditions (i.e. whether you plan in advance, want a flexible ticket). – Relaxed Feb 13 '15 at 16:32
  • @Relaxed So if you want to fly to New York this year, not caring when exactly, how can you find the cheapest route (as that is OP's question basically)? By just booking as far ahead as possible (i.e. a flight on the 31/12/2015)? Or by writing down all the prices for every day and picking the lowest price? – Saaru Lindestøkke Feb 13 '15 at 18:28
  • @BarArondson Well, that's not the OP's question, basically or otherwise… – Relaxed Feb 13 '15 at 18:29
  • @Relaxed Would you mind explaining what the question is then? – Saaru Lindestøkke Feb 13 '15 at 18:30
  • @BartArondson It's (quite explicitly) about general trends/statistics (i.e. past data), while Google Flights, ITA Matrix, Adioso, Momondo, Skyscanner and others aren't (they just check what you can buy right now: The prices they display is not a trend or a stat, it's an actual fare). I just clarified the distinction at the end of my answer, if it helps. – Relaxed Feb 13 '15 at 18:33
  • @BartArondson To understand the distinction, think “How much do flights generally cost in June, July and August?” vs. “What's the cheapest flight available for June-August 2015?” – Relaxed Feb 13 '15 at 18:36
  • @BartArondson I would add that my answer is precisely about this distinction. If the question really was about fares available right now (which, judging by his comments, the OP is obviously also interested in even if he did not indicate that clearly in the question) then my remarks would be completely irrelevant. – Relaxed Feb 13 '15 at 19:05
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You could use Google Trends Google Trends and select the travel section. After pick your destination and enter

flights to Spain

, you will be able to see when that queries is getting more and more popular and when it decrease. You could cross compare those trends with the price you found with Google Flights. Hope that information can help you.

talkingHead
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