Booking flights around the holidays can be painful. As someone who likes to fly home for the holidays, I’ve gotten used to the battle of finding a good deal on holiday airfare.
So, this fall, I grabbed my sword and shield and assumed battle positions as usual … but something is different this year.
Airfare might be up overall, but for some reason, fares around Christmas and New Year’s aren’t as high as usual … and some fares are even dropping!
This is something I noticed in my own booking for this Christmas, but it’s also borne out in a bevy of Thrifty Traveler Premium flight deal alerts we’ve sent to our subscribers over the past two weeks, featuring some cheaper-than-normal domestic holiday fares.
In the past week, we’ve sent flight deal alerts for places like Atlanta (ATL), Austin (AUS), Chicago (ORD, MDW), and Nashville (BNA), including Christmas and New Year’s availability to and from dozens of U.S. cities.
Say you wanted to get to the Florida Gulf Coast for Christmas and New Year’s Eve from Atlanta this year. Our latest deal to Atlanta (ATL) featured not only super-cheap fares from Tampa (TPA) to Atlanta, but also incredibly cheap reverse fares that are still bookable as I write this on the morning of Nov. 4.
And this wasn’t just one-off availability, either. In both these cases, there were four or more flights per day that you could book for less than $200 roundtrip over Christmas or New Year’s – which are typically flights that cost travelers much, much more because of the high travel demand around the holidays.
Atlanta doesn’t get all the fun, either. This Austin (AUS) deal featured tons of holiday availability, too, including many Southwest fares like this cheap option from New Orleans (MSY).
As is usually the case when Southwest offers cheap fares, the other airlines had to match. Delta is also offering sub-$200 roundtrip flights over New Year’s from Denver (DEN), too!
This sort of availability is the kind of thing we love showcasing for our Thrifty Traveler Premium members. We always check holiday availability so our members have the best shot at low fares.
But I’ll admit the idea for this story is entirely selfish: I wanted to book flights home to Chicago (ORD) for Christmas this year. Our travel dates were relatively inflexible, so I held my nose and booked a $366 roundtrip fare that returns on Christmas Day after seeing a Google Flights Price Alert that the fare had dropped from over $450.
So, I did what we tell all travelers to do: Right after I booked my flight, I loaded it into FareTracker – a free tool we built to constantly monitor flight prices and alert you when fares drop so you can get an e-credit for the difference.
And it did just that!
$31 won’t change my fortunes forever, but that e-credit will take the sting out of a future flight booking. So I thought that if my Christmas flights are getting cheaper (more than $120 cheaper than when I started tracking them), this might be happening elsewhere.
Well, the team at Thrifty Traveler Premium was way ahead of me, wrangling up low Christmas and New Year’s flights from several cities flying nonstop to Chicago (ORD, MDW).
As with many of the examples on this list, the lowest fares are on shorter nonstop flights, such as from Cleveland (CLE) to St. Louis (STL) to Chicago. You won’t find a lot of coast-to-coast flights with incredibly low fares, for instance.
But not all of these flights are puddle-jumpers, either. Flights from Dallas (DFW) to Nashville (BNA) or from Orlando (MCO) to Nashville (BNA) are both nearly 2-hour flights and saw huge savings off the usual Christmas rates, too.
Plus, these flights are to and from sought-after destinations where there should be strong demand. It’s strange that they’re so cheap!
So, what should you watch for to secure cheap flights over Christmas and New Year’s right now?
- Shorter, nonstop flights are most likely to be cheap
- Flying on Christmas Eve, Christmas, New Year’s Eve, or New Year’s Day will offer the lowest rates
- Book ASAP – We’re now less than two months away from these flights, and they’re unlikely to get cheaper
- Book flexible and use FareTracker just in case the prices do go down so you’re protected!
Bottom Line
There’s good news in airfare right now, and that’s the cheap fares you can still find over Christmas and New Year’s.
If you want to fly this holiday season domestically, there are some cheap flights in and around the U.S. that you should book ASAP!
