The Best and Worst Times to Fly for a Smooth and Happy Journey
According to new research from HappyOrNot, the best day and time to fly is on a Wednesday at 7am. The study analyzed data from over 30 countries and 10 million customers to find out which date and time gets the most positive feedback. At 7am on Wednesdays, 84.5% of customers gave positive feedback about their travels. This was closely followed by 8am and 4am in the morning, which received 84.4% and 84.2% positive customer feedback respectively.
The worst times to travel were in the late hours, with midnight being the worst culprit. It was closely followed by 11pm and 10pm which had lower customer satisfaction scores of 79.1% and 79.3%. The late night flights are the ones causing trouble for holiday goers it seems, so maybe think about booking a morning flight. It’ll only get worse if you’re jetting off on a Sunday too. This was voted the least happy day to travel, with customer satisfaction dropping to 80.5%. A fifth of people weren’t happy with their journeys on this day, and the last thing you want is a nightmare experience to start your trip off on a bad note.
The feedback button company also discovered which areas of the airports were the most unhappy. It comes as no surprise that baggage claim received the most negative feedback in the entire airport. We’ve all had it happen to us, you get to the conveyor belts to wait for what feels like hours for bags to start to appear, only to find yours wasn’t put on the plane or it was damaged in transit. The happiest area of the airport was security. It had the least negative feedback in the entire terminal, meaning us travellers must’ve finally got the hang of putting our liquids in the right sized bag.
Overall the main qualms holiday goers had with their airport experiences were rude staff and irritating queues. Making sure you have a pleasant journey doesn’t stop once you’re on the plane though. If you’re a nervous flyer, Metro also has the scoop on the most turbulent flight routes. Turbulence prediction website Turbli examined 150,000 routes to find the most turbulent journeys of last year.
The results show those looking for smooth flights might want to avoid South American travel – especially going from Santiago, Chile, to Viru Viru International airport in Bolivia, as this 1,180-mile journey ranked as the most turbulent. The route from Almaty, in Kazakhstan, and the capital of Kyrgyzstan, Bishkek, came second. Milan to Geneva scooped fifth position in the rankings, alongside Milan to Zurich in tenth place.
This is because, as Turbli founder Ignacio Gallego Marcos explains, routes over the Andes or Alps ‘appear high in the ranking due to mountain wave turbulence over the Andes and Alps.’
