How to Find 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:

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.

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.

3. Use a Flight Tracker

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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.

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.

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.
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.

7. Know When to Fly

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.

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.

10. Use a Rewards Travel Card

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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.