10 Insider Tips for Finding Cheap Holiday Flights (Hint: Book Soon!)
Looking for cheap holiday flights?
It may sound like an oxymoron, but finding reasonably priced airfare for the holidays is doable.
Here are our best tips and tricks for finding cheap holiday flights:
10 Tips and Tricks for Finding Cheap Holiday Flights
If you’re struggling to afford your tickets home for the holidays, here are 10 tricks of the trade that can help you get cheaper flights this season.
1. Don’t Wait
Seriously, buy your tickets as early as possible. According to data from Google Flights. the sweet spot for domestic flights is 21-52 days before departure. That’s 28 days earlier than it was in 2023.
For the holidays, it’s better to book even earlier. Travelers heading home for Thanksgiving should book their trips in early October. And if you’re traveling for Christmas, the back end of October is the ideal booking window.
Of course, not everyone knows their holiday plans so far in advance. While you’re statistically likely to get the best Thanksgiving flight deals in early October and Christmas flight deals later in the month, you can still find cheap holiday flights up to three weeks ahead of your departure date.
Once you hit that three-week pre-departure window, airlines will jack up the rates. At that point, you’re better off driving — or hitching a ride with Santa.
2. Shop Around for the Best Deal
For researching your flight options, don’t rely solely on the airlines’ websites. Use resources like Google Flights, Priceline, Momondo, ITA Flight Matrix, and Skyscanner to compare prices across different airlines.
Some of these resources merely compile the data but take you to the airline’s website to book directly. Others let you book through their third-party site. Exercise caution: It’s almost always safer and more reliable to book directly.
3. Use a Flight Tracker
Routinely checking an app or your browser to see how flight prices have changed can be exhausting. If you don’t have the time or energy to check prices several times each day, let technology do it for you. Online flight trackers can send you alerts when prices drop for your preferred travel date, time and destination.
Many airlines and travel credit cards alike offer programs to lock in prices for a set number of days. So if you spot a great price on a holiday flight but need to confirm with the in-laws that it’s OK to show up a day early or fly into an airport an hour away, you might be able to freeze the price for a service charge.
A note on cookies (no, not Christmas cookies): For more than a decade, some have speculated that airlines would use cookies to track when you searched for a certain flight — and then jacked up the prices the next time you looked. But there is no evidence of this. Airlines and travel companies deny these claims, and most travel experts now agree that it’s untrue.
4. Fly on the Holiday Itself
Nobody wants to fly on Thanksgiving, Christmas or New Year’s Day — which is why you can sometimes score great deals by doing so.
Flying on the holiday doesn’t have to mean missing all the festivities. One option would be to leave super early in the morning, arriving just in time for turkey. Another would be to coordinate with your family to celebrate the day after. If everyone agrees to do so, then you all can enjoy savings and less-crowded airports without missing a thing. Here’s a calendar from CheapAir showing the best and worst days to fly around the holidays.
5. Fly Early and Look for Layovers
Waking up for a 6 a.m. flight after a night of hitting the eggnog may not sound ideal, but early-morning flights are usually cheaper than flights in the late morning, afternoon and evening. Delays and cancellations are higher than ever in 2022, so booking an early flight also means you’ll have more opportunities to catch a new flight if your initial flight doesn’t work out.
Flying direct is also more expensive than a flight with one or more layovers. If you can stomach the thought of changing planes and sitting in another packed airport, you can shave some serious cash off your flight by opting for a layover. Just give yourself enough time between flights to account for delays!
6. Check Fares at Nearby Airports
Just because an airport is the biggest doesn’t mean it’s the cheapest. Check alternate departure and arrival airports to try and score a deal. You can even fly into one airport and out of another.
If you need ideas, check out this handy list of alternate airports from Johnny Jet. Just make sure you have an affordable way to get to your family if you choose an airport that’s farther from your holiday destination.
7. Know When to Fly
If you want to save money, don’t fly on a Sunday. This rule applies all year long — but especially around the holidays. Wednesday is the cheapest day to fly. And Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday are 13% cheaper than flying Friday, Saturday or Sunday, Google Flights data shows.
8. Extend Your Trip
Extending your trip a day or two before or after the holiday weekend might yield cheaper holiday flights. For example, if you’re supposed to work on the Monday after Thanksgiving, ask your employer if you can work remotely or take a day of unpaid leave or vacation, then fly home Monday evening.
You may miss out on some income, but the money you’ll save on your ticket should more than make up for it — not to mention, you’ll have one extra day with your loved ones.
9. Ship Your Presents to Avoid Baggage Fees
Airlines baggage fees have gone up, and they continue to add to the overall cost of traveling. If you’re flying in for Christmas, it may be easier to ship your family’s presents directly to them when online shopping. Ask your family to do the same with yours so you don’t have to worry about packing them to fly home.
Is it a little less magical? Sure. But by cutting out unnecessary baggage fees, you’ll have more in your gift budget for friends and family to go around.
If you struggle with baggage fees even without the presents, check out our packing tips to avoid luggage fees.
10. Use a Rewards Travel Card
There’s no way around it: Holiday flights are expensive. But you can recoup a little bit of the expense by paying for travel with a rewards credit card.
Some travel credit cards might earn you cash back while others can rack up points for future travel. If you have a points card, you can even use existing points to fund your holiday flights.
Contributor Timothy Moore is a writer and editor in Cincinnati who covers banks, loans insurance, travel and automotive topics for The Penny Hoarder. Susan Shain contributed to this post.
