Common mistakes
Five mistakes that keep repeating when booking flights
They all come from the same habit: comparing one number when the real cost is made of several.
1. Comparing the ticket instead of the cost of arriving
Rome has two airports: Fiumicino, the main one, and Ciampino, where Ryanair and easyJet land, about 45 minutes out. Paris has two, Charles de Gaulle and Orly — and Orly is the closer of the pair. Barcelona has El Prat, and also Girona, which is about ninety minutes away by bus.
A cheaper seat into a further airport is sometimes still the better deal. It is simply not the same product, and it deserves to be compared as one.
2. Leaving the bag out of the sum
On routes where a full-service airline competes with a low-cost one, the gap often closes the moment baggage is added. KLM to Amsterdam and Austrian to Vienna usually include a bag; easyJet does not.
That does not make low-cost more expensive. It means the comparison has to be on total cost, or you are comparing two different things.
3. Booking too early, or too late
The booking window is not the same everywhere. For Larnaca we aim at three to eight weeks out, for Rome and Vienna six to ten, for Amsterdam and Paris eight to fourteen, and for Bangkok ten to sixteen.
The general advice to "book early" is roughly right, which is exactly what makes it expensive: for a short hop it is too early, and for a long-haul it is too late.
4. Fixing a date when you could move a day
Every destination we hold data on has days that tend to be cheaper, and they are not the same across destinations. Rome runs Tuesday, Wednesday and Saturday; Prague Tuesday and Saturday; Vienna Tuesday and Wednesday.
A day or two of flexibility is usually the largest lever you control, and it costs nothing.
5. Treating the price you saw as the price
A measured price is true at the moment it was measured. It is not a guarantee of availability and not a current price, and the final price is set by the provider.
That is why every figure we publish carries the date it was measured beside it. If a few days have passed, the only way to know what is there today is to search your own dates.
Compare the total cost of arriving rather than the fare, include the bag, match the booking window to the destination, move a day if you can, and never treat yesterday’s price as today’s.
Where to go from here
- When to fly to Rome — and when not to
- Airport to city: what is actually waiting for you in six cities
- Search flights
- Plan a trip
The facts in this article come from our own destination knowledge. They are not a measured price: prices on this site always carry the date they were measured.
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