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However, a few month ago some clever folks at a firm named Mater, whose main activity is collecting blogs for travellers, began publishing fascinating stories about how you can reduce your travelling expenses. Reporting (available at hopper.com/research by subscribing to their mailinglist or following their lead researcher on Twitter, @patricksurry) comes with a rate, visibility and detail I haven't seen in other reporting that tries to address similar issues - and I've watched it.

Hopper also offers customisable utilities that are as efficient as they are easy to use, while statistical reporting provides only rough inception. Hopper's attention to detail and adaptability means more specifity, whether you know exactly where you're going or haven't made up your mind yet. Having used the reporting and tooling for a long time, I came to some conclusion; here are some of the most useful ones.

However, even before we get to these user-defined utilities, some useful hints come out: In the overwhelming number of cases, weekend is the best way to make a reservation, and Wednesday or Thursday is the best way to make about two-thirds of the route. Therefore, try to stay away from weekend bookings and try during the week; for the typical US pilot, these long-term cost reductions sum up.

Hopper's report also shows that the days of the weeks you leave and the days you come back count more than the days you make the booking. If you''re on a national flight, Wednesday (the best day) saves you an estimated $40 over Sunday (the worse day) and Tuesday (Tuesday) saves you $45 over Friday.

That'?s also the way it is on avarage. Of course, you are neither an ordinary traveller nor do you take an "average flight". This is where Hopper's Origin Destination stories come in - available at hopper.com/research/hopper-research-data - come in. Click here to see a custom log file with the lowest cost days to be booked, the lowest cost days to be flown, and much more, plus figures on how much you can anticipate to be saved.

Use a very beloved itinerary, such as J.F.K. to Los Angeles International Airport, for which Hopper's review used 57 million fare quotes given last month. Hopper's latest flight estimate is 57 million. It turned out to be insane to make a reservation from Thursday to Monday because, according to the chart I received, making a reservation on Wednesday (Tuesday is somewhere in the middle) would mean saving $45 or so.

You will also find that Tuesday's return will cost you an estimated $35 less than Thursday's return to Sunday. Tuesday departure is $200 less expensive for the standard traveller than Friday to Monday departure. The return flight on Tuesday is also 100 to 200 dollars less expensive than any other one. Hopper's most interesting report this past season is about air travel to Europe.

Drawing up a shortlist of the most wanted tourist attractions in Europe from each of the four major towns - New York, Los Angeles, Boston and Chicago - with the lowest prices, they came to some fascinating conclusion. However, the least expensive targets from each of these towns were very different. In some cases the differences in prices are significantly higher than the addition of the costs of an intra-European trip.

Mean fare is $1,089, while mean fare to Lisbon is $677. Get a budget ticket from Lisbon to Paris - you fly for only $150 - and you have a Lisbon-Paris holiday for less than driving alone to Paris. We have some last reservations about the Hopper accounts.

As an example, the "average" price is actually the mean for the least expensive 10 per cent of the results. This makes a lot of sense given that most individuals disregard the least useful results - for example, an Air India trip from New York to Washington with a stop in Mumbai for $6,500. By the time tens of thousands of Texans are reading this and go live next Friday to make reservations for Beijing return Tuesday, fares may well rise: