Set a watch on the route and stay loose about which airport you leave from. Drops inside a fortnight of departure tend to last hours rather than days, so the members who move first are the ones who fly for less.

Across our own booking record the softest window sits five to nine weeks out on short hops, and eleven to sixteen weeks on the long ones. Midweek departures stay the quietest almost everywhere we watch.

Weather, crew rotation and swapped aircraft account for most of it. When a carrier drops a service you are owed either a rebooking or your money back, and our desk will file that claim on your behalf.

Fuel, landing charges and the plain fact that the final rows on a busy aircraft sell out of the dearest bucket. Shifting your dates a week either side of the crowd usually drops you into a cheaper one.

Watch the fare, not the calendar. We send word the moment a route slips under its twelve-month median, which is a far better signal than any fixed rule about which weekday to buy on.