Traveling over a holiday is always dicey. Thousands of other people have the same idea, so flights are a tough ticket. They’re crowded, hard to book and expensive.
“The word to use for holiday travel is ‘ugly.’ If you haven’t already bought your ticket by now, you may pay three to five times the low fares,” said Tom Parsons, CEO of www.BestFares.com.
But there’s an out if you’re willing to be flexible: Travel on the holiday itself. Many flights are wide open that day.
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Maybe you, like many others, don’t want to get up early on Thanksgiving, Christmas or New Year’s Day morning to board an airplane, but if it gets you to your loved ones, isn’t it worth it?
Many savvy travelers think so.
“I myself travel on Thanksgiving morning,” said Amy Ziff, editor-at-large of Travelocity, an online booking agency.
Thanksgiving weekend is the heaviest travel period of the year. But if you book ahead, good fares still may be available, Ziff said.
“We’re going into the holidays with more people traveling and fewer planes,” Ziff said. Her advice: “Buy ahead if you can.”
If you’ve procrastinated or decided to travel over a holiday at the last minute, your options–other than paying through the nose–likely will be quite limited.
“It’s possible you may see fare sales for the holiday, but not until the week before,” Parsons said. Indeed, United Airlines just announced a holiday fare sale good with 50 percent off domestic flights–but they must be booked by Nov. 21.
Flying out on the holiday, however, has proven to be a consistently good option for some.
“The thing to do this Thanksgiving is to get an early flight on Thanksgiving morning, be with the family for the carving of the turkey and then return Friday or Saturday,” said Peter Greenberg, travel editor of NBC’s “Today” show.
“It’s a win-win situation: You avoid traffic both going and coming, and the fares are good.”
Unless you book well ahead of time, he said, forget about traveling on the day before the holiday or on the Sunday afterward.
One good way to latch on to attractive fares and travel times is offered on the Internet by online booking agency Orbitz, which has two useful search programs.
Using Flex Search, prospective travelers can bracket their search to include two or three days before and after the dates they prefer to travel.
Another approach uses Orbitz’s Deal Detector, which serves travelers who know when they want to travel and how much they want to spend. They enter the dates and their target price, and Orbitz checks it daily and sends an e-mail to the individual when and if the price comes through.
What about using frequent flier miles to secure a holiday flight?
If your travel dates are not blacked out (and many holiday periods are), you stand a good chance if you fly on the holiday itself.
“It’s easier to get such flights on a holiday,” said Tim Winship, publisher of www.frequentflier.com. “I’ve used frequent flier miles on both Thanksgiving and Christmas. In both cases, I would’ve preferred to fly at another time, but I was able to get a seat on the holiday.”
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Edited by Cara DiPasquale ([email protected]) and Kris Karnopp ([email protected])