Explained: The cheapest days of the week to fly to and from France

Flights scheduled to depart on a Tuesday or Friday are likely to be cheaper than on any other day of the week, according to a new analysis of tickets bought in France.

For domestic flights, one-way tickets for Tuesday flights were always the cheapest at an average of €90, compared to the most expensive day, Saturday, when the average price was €109, according to the Kayak booking agency.

For return flights, passengers leaving on Fridays paid the least, at an average of €166, while those flying on a Saturday paid €220. 

For the return, passengers flying back on a Monday paid an average of €164, while those returning on a Saturday paid €235.

European flights showed a similar pattern, with one-way tickets cheapest on Tuesdays, at €119, and Saturday flyers paying the most at €147.

For European return flights, leaving on Fridays is cheapest with an average cost of €192, compared to €241 on Saturdays, the most expensive day.

Return flights within Europe were cheapest on Tuesdays at €192, compared to €252 on Saturdays.

With flights to destinations outside Europe, the same one-way Tuesday and Saturday pattern was confirmed, with Tuesday prices averaging €444 and Saturday ones €478.

However, flights leaving on a Thursday were cheapest for international (outside Europe) return travel at an average price of €656, while Saturday was the most expensive day at €693.

Those returning on Mondays paid an average of €630, while a return on Saturday was the most expensive at €709.

Read more: Low-cost airline to charge passengers extra tax on already booked French flights

Cheaper direct flights

Another quirk shared by Kayak was that direct flights, as well as being less stressful than those involving a connection, are usually cheaper.

Advice abounds in France on the best time and method to buy airline tickets, although some received ideas, such as that tickets are always cheaper if bought late at night, are urban myths.

Others are more helpful – this writer, for example, once bought a return ticket to South Africa €20 cheaper by simply clearing cookies from the website browser showing the booking page.

Others have achieved similar results by booking via VPN connections, which disguise where your computer is located, when booking.

Read more: Flying in France: Ryanair to levy €100 charge for people arriving late for flights

Dynamic pricing

The reason is that airlines were among the first to abandon the idea of a fixed price for seats, developing dynamic pricing with the aim of filling every possible seat.

Fixed costs for an airline are high, and if it knows it will recover these by filling the flight to 70% of capacity at or near its optimal price, then every seat sold thereafter is profit, even if the last one goes to someone who only pays €10.

Airlines were also early and enthusiastic users of web cookies – those little bits of code used to track a person’s browsing activity.

In researching this article, The Connexion visited various booking sites, resulting in our internet browsers being filled with cookies - despite refusing them.

If, as with the South Africa flight, a cookie recorded that we had checked prices several times, the inference was that we were likely to buy, rather than simply browsing, even if the price was €20 higher than for people who had not been tracked.

Prices are also continually adjusted by airlines based on what competitors are charging, and by how many seats have been reserved on a flight.