Customers have suggested a social media post by Money Saving Expert Martin Lewis announcing the best time to book easyJet’s new winter 2024/5 flights may have started a booking frenzy.
EasyJet put its winter 2024 schedule for 1 December 2024 to 2 March 2025 on sale this morning, with more than 10 million seats to and from the UK available to book.
Martin shared a video message on X last night telling followers the new flights were expected to go on sale around 9am – but suggested bargain hunters log on at 6am in case they came out early.
In the post, which was headed: ‘Urgent EasyJet heads up – trick for you to get supercheap flights, won’t last long’, Martin told followers easyJet uses demand pricing, meaning: “Usually the very cheapest point is exactly when the flights are launched.”
Martin said: “If you can pounce when they launch that is usually the very cheapest time. It says 9 o’clock but normally we’ve started to see them launch from around 6am or even earlier.
“It’s [easyJet] never told us an exact time before. The safest thing to do would be to get online at about 6am and start checking at that point.”
He added: “Is this definitely the cheapest time? Well, easyJet says this is the cheapest time to book. My view is seats may get cheaper if there was very, very little demand for the flight later on but you have no way of knowing that, whereas you do have a way of knowing that the flights are being launched Thursday morning, in which case that’s probably the safest chance you’ve got to try and book really cheap flights.”
He followed his advice with an example from a customer who ‘nabbed’ flights at 6.15am last year, which went up £215 per person less than two hours later.
This morning, several customers reported prices had gone up since 6am. One follower posted at around 8am to say: “Flights to Lanzarote in February half term have gone up by £150 in the last hour.”
Another said she booked flights at an ‘acceptable’ price, but added: “Friends booked same flights 10 mins after and already gone up £120pp.”
Another user reported he’d found ‘extortionate’ flight prices to Finland in February half term at 6am, adding: “I think easyJet have been following your feed and anticipated the interest.”
One X user suggested that because Martin had ‘just advertised it to 2.7m people’ he was ‘driving demand and price’.
Another X user asked Martin: “Are you not driving demand so prices will actually be more expensive when the seats launch?”
In response, Martin replied: “No because you can’t buy them until the flights launch. This is about being the first on the route. We’ve been doing this for about 10 years, it works, and we’ve always told people.”
Sample one-way fares for easyJet’s winter programme include Glasgow to Berlin from £29.99, Edinburgh to Paris Charles de Gaulle from £38.99 and Bristol to Reykjavik from £34.
EasyJet UK Country Manager Ali Gayward said: “We are delighted to be putting more of our winter schedule on sale today so that customers can book early and enjoy great value fares on flights and package holidays for a Christmas break, their next ski getaway or enjoy some winter sun.
“By putting millions of seats on sale until 2 March 2025 across over 500 routes from the UK to more than 130 destinations across Europe and beyond, we are providing more choice and value for our customers in the UK and we look forward to welcoming them onboard.”
