Timely help for booking your flight

A new tool from Danish travel site Momondo.com may help take away some of the stress of flight shopping by advising us when to buy an airline ticket.

More than a simple price calendar, Momondo’s Flight Insights tool considers six essential factors that determine the price of a ticket for a particular flight search: number of days in advance, time of day, day of the week, seasonality, airport and airline.

Even if you are booking a last-minute ticket, this tool can help determine which airline normally has the lowest price fares for a particular route.

Momondo says more than 400 searches currently offer Flight Insights, including most flights from/to New York, London and Copenhagen. The tool is offered on routes between LAX and Chicago, New York, Honolulu, Las Vegas, San Francisco, London, Berlin, Cophenhagen, Stockholm and Tehran. Although flights from San Francisco and Chicago aren’t yet in the mix, Momondo is working hard to add more Flight Insights daily with the goal of eventually providing insights for every search.

Tested: On a roundtrip flight search from LAX to New York City roundtrip from July 3-7, Flight Insights showed Tuesday was the cheapest day to fly, and it was cheaper to land at La Guardia than at JFK. Although Sun Country Airlines had the cheapest average price, when I clicked the link for the airline graph, I discovered Delta had the second-lowest fares; Spirit had the most expensive. Flight Insights recommended purchasing this flight itinerary 55 days in advance.

Info: Momondo.com

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