With January now in full swing after those long, lazy afternoons of the festive season, it’s time to start looking forward to your next big trip to help get you through the post-holiday blues. Leading travel search site and app Skyscanner has compiled data out of the UAE from the past year to bring you the best tips and tricks that will help you smarten your holiday bookings and spending in 2019.
FLY ON A THURSDAY
Over the last year, Skyscanner.ae flight data has shown that the cheapest day of the week to fly out of the UAE is a Thursday, with Friday being the most expensive. Based on average flight prices, travelers could save over 10% by switching from a Friday departure day to a Thursday departure day.
Travelers may also find it’s significantly cheaper to travel a day before or a day after their original departure dates. It also pays to use Skyscanner’s Month View search tool to find the cheapest flights for their destination.
BOOK FLIGHTS ON A SATURDAY
When looking at the best day to jump online to book a cheap flight, Skyscanner data shows that Saturdays are the cheapest while Wednesdays tend to be the most expensive day to book a flight. The data suggests travellers could save two per cent on average flight prices by booking on Saturday over a Wednesday.
AVOID THE RUSH
Whilst Sunday 1st April was the busiest day for outbound flights from the UAE in 2018, typically Thursday is the busiest day for travel, whereas Saturday is the quietest.
CONSIDER A NEARBY AIRPORT
UAE residents should also consider flying out of a different airport nearby to save money, for example a family of four flying to London in March could save over AED 3,000 if they switched their outbound airport from Abu Dhabi to Dubai. Travelers just need to click on ‘add nearby airports’ when creating a search and see if a short drive, bus or train journey could save them Dirhams.
MIX & MATCH AIRLINES
Fares don’t have to be booked as returns, instead you can save money by flying out with one airline and returning with another.
SEARCH EVERYWHERE
For those with a limited budget but unsure of where to go, Skyscanner’s great Search Everywhere tool, will find the cheapest destinations to travel to for a specific date period. For example, travelers could fly from Abu Dhabi to Istanbul, Turkey in April from as little as AED 374* return (price correct at time of publication – flight details here).
BEST VALUE DESTINATIONS FOR UAE TRAVELLERS IN 2019
Manila and Kochi lead the way for most popular destinations in 2018, but for those looking for the best value flights, the world’s travel search engine has number crunched the top destinations to uncover those with the biggest drop in average flight prices over the last year. Salalah, Oman lead the list with a 40% price drop, followed by Las Vegas 21% and Muscat 14%.
| Ranking | Cities | % price drop YoY6 |
| 1 | Salalah, Oman | -40 |
| 2 | Las Vegas, United States | -21 |
| 3 | Muscat, Oman | -14 |
| 4 | Larnaca, Cyprus | -14 |
| 5 | Tashkent, Uzbekistan | -13 |
| 6 | Harare, Zimbabwe | -13 |
| 7 | Los Angeles, United States | -9 |
| 8 | Madurai, India | -9 |
| 9 | Chandigarh, India | -9 |
| 10 | Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt | -9 |
MONITOR PRICES
And lastly, the best way of getting a good fare is to keep track of the prices by setting up a price alert so that you are notified when prices rise or fall on a specific route.
*Published January 2019 based on data analysis from Skyscanner over the last year (2018). Any prices included correct at the time of publication but may be subject to change and/or availability.