When Are StarFlyer Sales? The Monthly STARFRIDAY Slot and Its Record
AuthorMIRUTOBE editors
Table of Contents6 items
Star Flyer publishes STARFRIDAY as a standing slot on the last Friday of the month. Both rounds we have on record opened at midnight on the Friday and stayed open for seven days, closing the following Thursday.
If the shape holds, the next one opens on Friday 25 September and closes on Thursday 1 October. The airline has not announced those dates; they come from the calendar.
The forecast is an estimate drawn from past rounds and is not a guarantee of the airline’s plans. For dates, fares and conditions, the airline’s own site is what counts.
Now on sale
What appears there is every round we have confirmed against an airline’s own announcement and whose deadline has not passed, so other airlines turn up in the list too. STARFRIDAY is fixed to the calendar rather than to news, which means that when it is not listed and the last Friday is near, going straight to the airline’s site is quicker.
When is the next one? What the record shows
The table holds only rounds we wrote up as bulletins and rounds still posted on the airline’s own site. A round missing from it was not necessarily missing from the world; it was missing from our record.
31 July and 28 August were both last Fridays, 28 days apart. Both opened at midnight exactly and closed at 23:54 the following Thursday. Once the weekday is fixed, the only intervals available are 28 days and 35 days. Where other airlines can only be read as “two or three weeks since the last one”, this slot yields an actual date from a calendar.
The date is all that is readable, though. The contents change every time. July carried five coupons ranging from 5,000 to 15,000 yen off; August was a single line of “up to 15,000 yen off”. The car hire discount was built differently too — up to 55 per cent off in July, up to 550 yen per 24 hours in August.
Month by month, what is on record (last two years)
● on record ○ nothing on record ― outside the observation window. The record starts on 1 July 2026, so there is no observation before June or after October. September is counted to the 14th, and the round on the 25th is still ahead.
September is blank because the 25th has not arrived. Star Flyer presents STARFRIDAY as a monthly fixture, so reaching October with that square still empty looks unlikely.
The kinds of sale, and how each one behaves
The window is seven days, and the last five minutes of it cannot be used
July ran from midnight on Friday the 31st to 23:54 on Thursday 6 August; August from midnight on Friday the 28th to 23:54 on Thursday 3 September. The name says Friday, but applications stay open into the following week — a window of seven days. Missing the Friday morning does not cost you the round.
There is a reason the deadline is 23:54 rather than 23:59. Star Flyer’s booking site goes down every day between 23:55 and 23:59, so the last usable moment is the minute before it. Leave it until just before midnight and you meet the five-minute gap instead of the booking screen.
An open window is not the same as available stock. The coupons are capped by number: the five types in the July round came to 26 vouchers between them.
What gets cheaper is the package and the car hire, not the fare
In both rounds on record, the discount attached to coupons for the official dynamic package — flight plus hotel. The airline states plainly that a flight on its own and a hotel on its own are not eligible. What ran alongside was a car hire discount, also restricted to people flying.
Cheaper flights do exist, in a different slot. Star Flyer’s domestic fare range includes a type called STAR LIMITED, which the airline describes as a fare bookable and purchasable on dates and times it designates. The booking deadline is whatever date the airline names, seat numbers are limited, and the booking cannot be changed. Sale fares come out under that type, and not necessarily on the same day as STARFRIDAY.
“Wait for the last Friday and flights get cheaper” does not survive these two rounds. Waiting pays if you are booking a hotel and a flight together. Buying a seat on its own, I see no reason to wait for the last Friday at all.
Some months collide with a timetable going on sale
The car hire sale on 28 August was named for the winter timetable launch. The winter 2026 timetable, covering travel from 25 October 2026 to 27 March 2027, opened for sale at midnight on Tuesday 25 August — three days before the last Friday. An international double-miles campaign on the Kitakyushu–Taipei route started on the same 28 August.
In months where a timetable launch lands near the last Friday, anniversary-branded promotions stack on top and the round is fatter. Expect the same thickness in a month with no launch nearby and you will be disappointed: the July round consisted of the coupons and the car hire, and nothing else.
Do paid memberships and coupons pay for themselves?
Star Flyer has no membership that lowers fares in return for an annual fee. Its frequent flyer programme, STAR LINK, has no joining fee and no annual fee, and the co-branded credit card is free in the first year. There is no membership cost to earn back, which leaves how you use the coupons as the only thing that moves the amount you pay.
Each of the five July denominations had its own minimum trip cost. The 15,000-yen voucher needed a total of 100,000 yen or more and was capped at the first three takers; the 10,000-yen voucher needed 80,000 yen, also first three; the 7,000-yen voucher needed 60,000 yen, first ten. Used exactly at the minimum, those work out at 15.0, 12.5 and 11.7 per cent, so the larger voucher is also the better rate. The ranking does not invert.
At the thresholds, the amount you pay inverts instead. A total of 79,000 yen only reaches the 7,000-yen voucher, so you pay 72,000. Push it to 80,000 and the 10,000-yen voucher applies, so you pay 70,000. Adding 1,000 yen to the trip takes 2,000 off the bill. The same happens at 100,000: a 99,000-yen trip nets out at 89,000, while a 100,000-yen trip nets out at 85,000 — 4,000 cheaper for a more expensive holiday.
Which means dropping a hotel grade to cut the total can raise what you actually pay. The version that backfires is switching to room-only and falling back under 80,000 or 100,000 yen. Looking at the total on the booking screen and asking whether it crosses a threshold takes less time than comparing rooms.
The voucher counts are worth reading too: three, three, ten, five and five, for 26 in all. The best rate, the 15,000-yen voucher, was limited to the first three; the one realistically within reach was the 7,000-yen voucher with ten available and a 60,000-yen minimum. The headline “up to 15,000 yen off” is the ceiling for someone who both built a 100,000-yen trip and got one of three slots.
How not to miss one
To set this against other airlines, the 50 airfare sales recorded over six weeks has the whole field. Within that record, Star Flyer was the only airline whose slot is fixed to a weekday.
Before you book
- A domestic passenger facility charge applies on top of the fare shown: per adult, 580 yen at Haneda, 560 at Kansai, 440 at Chubu, 290 at Sendai, 110 at Fukuoka and 100 at Kitakyushu. Haneda was 450 yen for tickets bought up to 31 August 2026 and rose to 580 for purchases from 1 September.
- STAR LIMITED, the sale fare type, cannot be changed once booked. Seat numbers are limited, and some periods, routes and flights carry no such fare at all.
- The booking site is down every day from 23:55 to 23:59, which puts the real deadline at 23:54 on the closing day.
- The official dynamic package carries a notice that, owing to a system fault, it cannot be searched or booked after 17:00 on the day before departure. Deciding on the night before and grabbing one is not currently possible.
- One coupon per booking, usable only by the lead traveller. The qualifying total includes the return fare, the facility charges, the accommodation and the taxes.
If the flight alone is what you want cheaply, the timetable launch that comes before the last Friday offers more to choose from. In August there were only three days between the 25th, when the timetable opened, and STARFRIDAY on the 28th, and the wider choice of flights was on the launch side. The winter timetable runs to 27 March 2027, so anything beyond that waits for the next launch. On the international side, the Kitakyushu–Taipei route is the one to watch, and Klook covers Taipei for the ground half of that trip.
Source: Star Flyer official site (STARFRIDAY, domestic fare types, STAR LIMITED, passenger facility charges, frequent flyer programme) / our own bulletins (recorded 1 July to 14 September 2026) / Checked on 2026-09-14 / Photo: Kentaro Iemoto, CC BY-SA 2.0 (Wikimedia Commons)
Other sales ending soon
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