How to get the cheapest flight
We just booked our annual pilgrimage to warmth - Florida. My Mum, the lucky gal, spends the winter there and I’ve always managed to get away for a visit. But right now with two kids and a tight budget, going south is going to be tough.
Updated November 2, 2012
We just booked our annual pilgrimage to warmth - Florida. My Mum, the lucky gal, spends the winter there and I’ve always managed to get away for a visit. But right now with two kids and a tight budget, going south is going to be tough.
The cost of flights is a killer - and we don’t even have to pay for our daughter yet because she hasn’t turned two. We talked about driving but, to be honest, my daughter isn’t ready for a long car ride - her backseat meltdowns on the 401 are legend.
But what I’ve come to realize is that if you time it right, you can save a lot of money on your flights. I’ve heard before that the cheapest day to fly is Tuesday - today, I played around with flight dates online and found that Wednesdays are even better. I checked a few sites - Expedia, Air Canada and WestJet - for our dates and destination and every time it was cheaper to go on Wednesday - sometimes significantly so.
A quick check done today on Air Canada for flights from Toronto to Tampa in early April gave me the following:
Saturday to Saturday - 1 adult ticket = $746.66
Tuesday to Tuesday - 1 adult ticket = $427.16
Wednesday to Wednesday - 1 adult ticket = $379.16
It wasn’t a seat sale as far as I could tell. Going on a Wednesday instead of a Saturday would save us $367.50 per ticket - times three for our family, that’s a total savings of $1102.50.
So if you’re flexible with your dates, traveling mid-week is a good way to ease the pain of high flight costs.
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