Wednesday is the best day to look for ticket bargains... Furthermore my experience shows that the best Wednesday bargains are for flights three weeks in advance. This Wednesday for example is August 9th: the best prices will be for those flights from August 30th to September 5th, next Wednesday the "sweet spot" falls from September 6th to 12th, and so on...

This item makes sense only to a person with rudimentary understanding of how computer systems work. I can see Wednesday in general being better due to patterns in business vs. leasure travel. I can see that SOME TIME AFTER MIDNIGHT (every night) booked seats are released. But to claim that all all airlines decided to keep the booked seats until Wednesday and then release them first thing after midnight makes no sense. Release of booked items is a daily process, not weekly. Plus, aren't booked items held for 24/48 or however many HOURS and not until next Wednesday. Sorry if you booked something late Tuesday night, you are SOL :)

I think this has less to do with computer systems, and more to do with business pratices. This has gotten press previously in the Wall Street Journal and the reason given was that the major airlines operate as a cartel, and in general they only make price adjustments on Wednesdays, and then fairly quickly pull back if the others don't match.

Hmm. I haven't really noticed prices being significantly higher after 1am...unless of course you wait hours and hours until 8 or 9. I usually buy airline tickets between 3am (when things at my "day" job get quiet) and 6am (when they start to get busy again), although this isn't to save money so much as because that's overwhelmingly the most convenient time.

My experience comes from working with databases for airlines. Based on what i have seen, the change in prices is not directly related to the automatic release of unbooked reservations (that happens on a daily basis set at predefined intervals by individual carriers).

The price that we as consumers pay are directly related to supply and demand (among other factors which for simplicity sake we will leave out for now). Prices for seats are set on a tier structure so as the plane gets filled up the prices increase. By booking on Wednesday mornings when the supply arrives on the market, you are able to catch the price at a lower tier thus paying less.

This "myth" is not a myth. I had been searching for plane tickets for a week and notice a significant increase in the price from a Saturday to a Wednesday. On Wednesday, my tickets for three people would have cost just under $1400. I decided to wait until after midnight to see if this tip was correct. Early Tuesday morning, I purchased my three tickets for $832. I am a believer. For fun, I then tracked the same tickets over the next week and saw the price go up significantly and drop dramtically again after midnight the following Wednesday.

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