That depends on how and where you plan to spend the holidays. If you are plan to take a plane to grandma’s house for Thanksgiving or Christmas you may be out of luck. According to travel agents, the average person books a flight 85 days in advance, up from 81 last year, and there are only 19 days until Thanksgiving and 51 days until Christmas. And even more bad news, in the past few weeks, several airlines have raised their fares.
Travel experts say frugal fliers bought their tickets early for Thanksgiving and Christmas this year. But, don’t despair, there is a way you can still (maybe) book a flight without going bankrupt in the process. The key: Be flexible. Not as in contorting your body to squeeze into a suitcase to fly in the cargo hold. Rather, be willing to take what you can get.
Travel experts say to get a decent deal on a plane ticket you need to understand how dynamic pricing works. Dynamic pricing is a method airlines use to change prices on the fly, as they book seats. Many airlines post discounts or new fares late Friday night or Saturday morning. By using a search engine such as Kayak, Travelocity, Orbitz, CheapTickets, or Expedia you can better determine which airlines service your city and which carrier offers the most flights to your destination. Then, it’s just a matter of testing which dates and times will yield the cheapest fares.
For example, say you live in New York and you needed to get home to Dallas for Thanksgiving. If you type in the departure date as November 21st and the return date as November 24th the total fare would be $935 on Continental for a nonstop flight. However, if you push the return date back to Sunday, November 25th the price drops to $852 per person for a nonstop flight. If you push the return date back to Monday, November 26th, the price drops to $502 per person on the same nonstop Continental flight. If you push the return back to Tuesday, November 27th, the price goes down to $422 per person. You get the idea.
You also can save money if you are willing to take a non-direct flight. In most cases, the more stops your flight makes the lower the price of your ticket.
And I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again—-before you book a flight visit farecast.com. The site not only predicts United States domestic price changes and enables you to book airline tickets online, it also provides refunds if it get its predictions wrong.
My last cost-saving tip: Use travel search engines to find your flight then reserve it on the airline’s site to avoid the booking fees at the travel sites.
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