Why Last-Minute Deals Are More Common in 2021

 

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If you’re a procrastinator, we’ve got good news and bad news. The good news? We’re currently seeing more last-minute deals on cheap flights than ever before. The bad news? This golden opportunity for last-minute deals probably won’t last much longer.  Goldilocks in quarantine When it comes to finding great deals on airfare, we’ve been preaching the gospel of the Goldilocks Window for years. In short, you don’t want to buy too early or too late. You’re looking for that “just right” moment. After years of monitoring deals, we came to the conclusion that the best time to buy is generally between one and three months in advance for domestic flights and between two and eight months in advance for international flights, adding some extra wiggle room for peak-season or holiday flights. The few last-minute deals we did see show up rarely had enough dates of availability to deserve a second look. But in recent months, we’ve noticed more and more widespread last-minute deals on major carriers popping up, even to in-demand destinations. Take the deal we sent our members in Austin on October 22: $158 nonstop, roundtrip to Cancún, with abundant travel dates as soon as November 3rd, including Thanksgiving. Or the deal Atlanta members got on October 26th: $130 roundtrip to Los Angeles or Long Beach on Southwest, with travel dates as early as November 4th. We’ve been so excited about this development that we sent out a widespread “Thanksgiving Weekend” deal to our members in late October, compiling dozens of domestic routes on sale for this typically-pricey week for under $200 roundtrip. Procrastinators rejoice, the last-minute deal is alive!  So what’s the deal? The reason for the increase in last-minute deals is complicated, but at the most basic level it comes down to supply and demand. Throughout the pandemic, whenever travel interest has started to show signs of rebounding, airlines have been aggressive about getting ahead of it, adding more and larger planes on routes they expect to have the biggest surges in demand. This increases both competition and supply on these routes. But aside from a blip during the summer, actual demand has generally tended to creep back at a much more gradual pace, leaving a persistent gap between the abundant supply of available seats, and the not-quite-back-where-it-was demand. Airlines have dealt with this in several ways. All those schedule changes and cancellations we’ve all read about? They can partially be attributed to a reshuffling of schedules when demand hasn’t quite met supply. But more importantly for cheap-flights aficionados like yourselves, airlines have responded by frequently slashing last-minute fares in an attempt to entice folks who have tended to pull the trigger later and with more hesitance, to fill those planes.  All good things come to an end Lest you procrastinators get too excited, I’m here to dampen the mood a bit. While last-minute deals are abundant at the moment, this opportunity is not likely to last. According to Kayak, overall flight searches are steadily creeping back towards where they were pre-pandemic. As of October 25 they were down about 17% from 2019 levels, and planes flying domestic routes are almost as full today (85%) as they were at this time in 2019 (88%). As these flight searches translate into more full or mostly-full planes, we expect to see fewer last-minute deals. With domestic demand rebounding faster than international demand, your window for being able to reliably find last-minute cheap domestic flights may already be closing, though this also depends on where you’re headed. Demand to hot leisure destinations like Miami and Las Vegas is back with a vengeance, whereas business-heavy destinations like San Francisco have been slower to bounce back. If you’re traveling abroad or to one of these business-heavy domestic destinations, we’d expect to see a couple more months of last-minute deals, as demand creeps back to normal, slowly but surely.  The bottom line These developments have been fun to watch, but overall they don’t mean too much when it comes to your best strategy for finding a cheap flight. We still strongly recommend starting your search early and keeping the Goldilocks Window in mind. While you may not be out of luck if you wait too long at the moment, it’s better to be safe than sorry, and it wouldn’t be wise to get in the habit of waiting for the last minute to book.