Only 36% of flight searches on my demo had fixed dates

Description and use

Over one year, only 36% of searches on the FlightPowers demo had fixed departure dates. The remaining 64% left room in the departure date or length of stay, with nearly one-third leaving more than two weeks. Analysis covered 27,320 searches from ~4,900 signed-in users, mostly starting from Tel Aviv.

Problem

Only 36% of flight searches on the FlightPowers demo had fixed departure dates, leaving 64% of searches with flexible date windows and a median search window of about 40 days.

Outcome

Of 27,320 searches over one year, only 36% had fixed departure dates. Nearly one in ten searches listed 10+ airports. When dates were fixed, 32% asked for Thursday departures. 38% set shortest stay at 3-4 nights, with a median search window of about 40 days ahead.

Workflow

• Group all searches in SQL by date range and stay length, excluding groups with fewer than 20 people
• Count searches with fixed departure dates versus flexible date windows
• Count searches listing 10 or more destination airports
• Analyze day-of-week preferences for fixed-date searches
• Measure shortest stay length distribution
• Rank single-city destinations by search volume

Evidence

I counted a year of searches on my flight search demo, and only 36% of them had fixed dates.

Between April 2025 and March 2026 the engine ran 27,320 searches there. About 4,900 signed-in users ran 21,822 of them, and visitors who weren't signed in ran the rest (most searches started in Tel Aviv).

Only 36% of searches had fixed dates. The other 64% left room in the departure date or the length of stay, and nearly a third of all searches left more than two weeks.

71% had a single destination airport. But 9.5% listed 10 or more, and since the prompt isn't stored, my guess is a lot of those were 'anywhere cheap' asks.

When the dates were fixed, 32% of searches asked to leave on a Thursday, 1.8 times Friday's share. Most searches on the site start in Tel Aviv, where the weekend is Friday and Saturday, so my guess is Thursday after work.

38% of round-trip searches set their shortest stay at 3-4 nights, and the median search looked about 40 days ahead.

In searches from Tel Aviv that named a single city, Bangkok drew the most people (about 290), then New York (about 260), and both beat every European city.