Ask the internet when to book a flight and you'll get a confident number: 54 days out, 21 days out, "Tuesday at midnight." These averages are mostly folklore — they blend cheap short-haul with expensive long-haul, peak season with off-peak, and every route on earth into one meaningless figure.
The honest answer is more useful: the best time to book depends on the route, and the only way to know is to watch that route's own price history. That's exactly what Flight Signal does.
Why blanket "book X days before" advice fails
A weekend in Lisbon and a fortnight in Tokyo follow completely different price curves. Short-haul European fares often _rise_ steadily as seats sell, so earlier is usually better. Cheap long-haul is advance-purchase — the bargains appear months out and vanish. A single "book 6 weeks before" rule can't be right for both.
Averages also hide the thing that actually saves you money: the occasional genuine drop. Missing one £200 dip on a long-haul return costs you far more than shaving a few pounds by booking on the "statistically optimal" weekday.
Watch the route, not the calendar
Instead of guessing, we track the cheapest fare observed per day on each route and compare today's price against that route's full distribution. That turns "when should I book?" into a question with a real answer:
- At or below the cheapest quartile for the route → unusually low, book with confidence.
- Around the median → a fair, ordinary price.
- Above the median → above typical; if your dates are flexible, it's worth waiting.
Every destination page shows this live: the median, the typical range, the cheapest we've ever recorded, and a plain-English verdict — all from our own observations. See exactly how we score it.
A note on our dataset
Flight Signal's price history grows every day. We publish a destination page only once we hold enough observations to say something meaningful, and we'll never dress up a short window as a long-term seasonal trend. As the record deepens, these pages get sharper — that's the whole point of observing prices ourselves rather than reselling someone else's snapshot.
The practical takeaway
1. Pick your route and check its price history page for the median and typical range. 2. If today's fare is in the cheapest quartile, that's your signal. 3. If it isn't and your dates are flexible, let us watch it — we'll ping you when a genuine drop lands.
Timing a flight isn't about a magic date. It's about knowing what the route normally costs, and pouncing when it doesn't.