The Extra Night That Buys A Cheaper Monday Flight

Extending a weekend usually sounds like spending more. On short domestic trips it frequently costs less overall, because of where the Sunday evening flight sits in the pricing curve.

Why the Sunday return prices high

Sunday afternoon and evening are when leisure demand peaks in the return direction, and pricing follows demand tranche by tranche as seats sell.

The earliest departures on Monday morning serve a different market, largely business travellers who book close in and whose demand is concentrated on particular routes.

On many leisure routes those Monday departures are simply less full, and the cheaper fare tranches survive on them longer than they do on the Sunday evening flight.

What the extra night costs

A Sunday night hotel room is generally the cheapest night of the week in a leisure destination, since the weekend demand has left.

So the additional expense is often modest, and it may be partly or fully offset by the fare difference in the other direction.

Parking, if you drove to the airport, is the one cost that increases straightforwardly with each additional day.

What you gain beyond the money

The Sunday evening you would have spent in an airport becomes an evening in the place you travelled to, which is the block short trips most often waste.

Sunday nights are also quieter at the destination, with fewer crowds and easier restaurant tables than the Friday and Saturday you have just had.

Monday mornings before an early flight are not usable for much, so the gain is genuinely the evening rather than an extra day.

What it costs in leave and in tiredness

The obvious price is a day of leave, or a morning of it if the flight lands early enough to work in the afternoon.

An early Monday departure also means a short night, and arriving at work directly from an airport is its own kind of cost.

For anyone who cannot take the Monday, the same logic applies to a Saturday morning departure instead of a Friday evening one, in reverse.

Checking whether it applies to your route

This is a tendency rather than a rule, and on business-heavy routes the Monday morning flight is the expensive one instead.

The check takes a minute: price the Sunday evening return against the Monday morning one, then add a night's accommodation to the second figure.