Booking a flight on a Friday now saves travelers more money than booking on a Tuesday, according to Expedia’s 2026 Air Hacks report, upending a piece of travel advice that’s circulated for years. The report, published in February 2026 and built from millions of Expedia booking data points collected between December 2024 and November 2025, found Friday bookings run about 3 percent cheaper on average than bookings made on Sunday, the most expensive day to buy a ticket. Tuesday hasn’t disappeared from the advice entirely — it’s just been demoted to the best day to actually fly, not the best day to book.
Two Different Questions, Two Different Answers
Part of the confusion around this finding comes from treating “cheapest day to book” and “cheapest day to fly” as the same question, when Expedia’s data treats them separately. For the day you buy the ticket, Friday now wins by roughly 3 percent over Sunday. For the day you actually depart, Tuesday still leads for domestic trips, averaging 14 percent less than a Sunday departure, according to the Expedia Newsroom report. Overall, across international and domestic travel combined, Friday departures also beat Sunday by about 8 percent. The old advice to book on a Tuesday wasn’t wrong for years — airlines simply adjusted their pricing patterns enough that the day-of-week discount moved.
What’s Behind the Shift
Airlines have gotten more sophisticated about how they release fare sales and adjust pricing algorithms in response to when consumers are actually shopping, and AFAR’s coverage of the report suggested that Tuesday fare drops became well known enough among travelers that airlines had less incentive to keep discounting that specific day as heavily. Sunday, by contrast, tends to see a spike in demand from people booking trips right after a weekend of researching options, which keeps prices elevated on both the booking and departure side. Euronews also flagged that these patterns hold most reliably for U.S. domestic and outbound international travel, with some international markets showing different day-of-week trends entirely.
How to Actually Use This
None of this means a Tuesday booking now costs a fortune, and the percentage differences involved are meaningful but not dramatic — a few percent off a few hundred dollars is real money, but it’s not the difference between an affordable trip and an unaffordable one. The more useful habit coming out of this report is separating the two decisions travelers used to lump together: pick your departure day for the trip itself, ideally a Tuesday if your dates are flexible, and then don’t feel obligated to wait for a specific day of the week to actually complete the purchase. Whatever day you click “buy,” Friday now has a modest edge that Tuesday used to hold.
