Booked a flight to Bangkok for $180 by setting an alert for midnight departures on Wednesdays

I noticed flights always dropped in price around 2am local time for the airport, so I stayed up three nights in a row snagging that deal on a Wednesday morning departure out of JFK, has anyone else noticed weird cheap windows like that?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_mary1mo ago

My buddy Kyle pulled something similar once. He snagged a round trip to Reykjavik for like $280 by booking on a Tuesday night at 3am EST out of Newark. He said the prices just tanked at that exact hour for some reason, and he sat there refreshing the page for an hour until it popped up. He ended up with a window seat and everything, crazy lucky.

the_riley1mo ago

That "sitting there refreshing for an hour" detail is actually KEY. Did Kyle ever say if he used any specific browser tricks or tools while he was doing that? I've heard people argue that using incognito mode or clearing your cookies somehow tricks the system, but other people say that's a total myth. I'm genuinely curious if he noticed any pattern in when the prices would drop, like did they fall by a little bit each time or all at once? Because that 3am EST thing is so specific, it makes me wonder if there's a real algorithm reason for it or if it's just random luck. I've stayed up late trying to catch those deals before and ended up just falling asleep with my laptop on my chest, so props to him for actually pulling it off.