When tickets are cheapest: seasonality and day of the week
What our own data shows
Below are the real minimum monthly prices for 4 popular routes from Chisinau, taken from Decolare.md's own price calendar (data as of July 2026). These aren't guesses — actual figures for each month.
Seasonality across 4 routes
Prices are the monthly minimum, in euros.
| Month | [Antalya](/airline-tickets/chisinau-antalya) | [Istanbul](/airline-tickets/chisinau-istanbul) | [London](/airline-tickets/chisinau-londra) | [Bucharest](/airline-tickets/chisinau-bucuresti) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| January | 64 | 64 | 38 | 15 |
| February | 65 | 63 | 43 | 15 |
| March | 65 | 64 | 36 | 15 |
| April | 71 | 64 | 41 | 15 |
| May | 122 | 65 | 67 | 20 |
| June | 176 | 73 | 140 | 41 |
| July | 67 | 37 | 34 | 18 |
| August | 73 | 65 | 52 | 15 |
| September | 54 | 63 | 36 | 13 |
| October | 61 | 65 | 36 | 13 |
| November | 51 | 63 | 36 | 15 |
| December | 65 | 65 | 34 | 15 |
What these numbers show
Antalya gets almost three times more expensive in June (€176 vs. €51 in November) — the peak of beach season. London follows the same pattern (€140 in June vs. €34 in winter), even though it's not a beach destination — more likely a coincidence with the summer holiday and school-break season. Bucharest and Istanbul are far steadier year-round — Bucharest barely moves at all, and Istanbul has just one visible cheap month, July. The general takeaway: the more a route is popular specifically in summer, the wider the price swing between months — and the more it pays to be flexible on dates.
Day of the week and booking window
Per Expedia's 2026 Air Hacks Report (as cited by The Points Guy), the cheapest day to buy a ticket is Friday, and the most expensive is Sunday — about a 3% difference. A small saving, but a free one: if your plans aren't urgent, hold off buying for a few days until Friday.
Per the same and related roundups, international routes are usually best booked 3-5 months ahead, while domestic/short-haul flights have a shorter optimal window — around 4-6 weeks. The day of the flight itself matters less than the overall booking window — airlines mainly move prices based on demand and how full a flight is, not the weekday of the flight.
How to use this in practice
For beach routes like Antalya, the gap between the June price and the November price is big enough to seriously consider shoulder-season months (May/September) instead of the peak. For routes without strong seasonality (like Bucharest), waiting for the "right month" makes less sense — it's more rational to track the price calendar for specific dates. Either way, start your search closer to Friday than Sunday, and build in at least a couple of months' lead time for international flights.
Sources
Monthly price data comes from Decolare.md's own price calendar, July 2026 (updated daily). Day-of-week and booking-window data comes from Expedia's Air Hacks Report 2026, as covered by The Points Guy.
What's next
The current price calendar for each route is on the route pages, e.g. Chisinau–Antalya or Chisinau–London. Our comparison of ticket-buying methods is in "5 ways to buy a ticket: what worked".
