Weekends best time to buy air tickets

Weekends are the best time to buy airline tickets, according to a new study.

According to Steven Puller, an associate professor of economics at Texas A and M who specializes in industrial organization, "there's been this industry folk wisdom that says Tuesdays and Wednesdays are the best days to purchase airline tickets, but we couldn't find any systematic analysis to back that up."

However, he said that the weekend is the best time to book airline tickets because airlines are more likely to discount fares on Saturday and Sunday.

In the study 'Price Discrimination By Day-Of-Week Of Purchase: Evidence From The U.S. Airline Industry,' Puller and co-author Lisa Taylor, a former Texas A and M graduate student, found that tickets purchased on the weekend were, on average, 5 percent cheaper than similar tickets purchased on weekdays.

"We find that when you control for a large set of factors - the day-of-week of travel, whether the ticket was refundable, the number of days in advance that the ticket was purchased, how full the flights were, and other factors - that tickets purchased on the weekends were sold, on average, for a 5 percent discount," Puller said.

The study is published in the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization.