Travel news around the world: Book Your Holiday Flights Now, But Avoid These 3 Days

Friday, 2 October 2015

Book Your Holiday Flights Now, But Avoid These 3 Days

You could probably guess that now is the best time to book your flights for Thanksgiving and winter holidays, but just how desperate is the situation?

Pretty desperate, in fact. You're gonna want to book ASAP, unless you're a highly flexible traveler. Flight prices may go down in the coming weeks, but so will the number of flight options to choose from.

Oh, and booking now will also help you avoid flying on one of these three terrible no-no days: Wednesday, Nov. 25; Sunday, Nov. 29 and Sunday, Jan. 3.

These three days will likely be the hands-down worst for travel this holiday season, according to intensive research from the experts at CheapAir. Their holiday cheap flights report predicts that the day before Thanksgiving will be incredibly expensive, as usual, along with the following Sunday. Christmas and New Years fall on Fridays, giving folks few weekday options to travel homeward. This will make the Sunday after New Years a BIG one in terms of travel: Avoid it to escape major flight fares.

Prices are currently on the rise for Thanksgiving but generally dropping for Christmas. You can track them on CheapAir's day-by-day price tracker. Here's when the site recommends flying for Thanksgiving and Christmas:

While you may be tempted to wait and see if holiday prices plummet further, CheapAir CEO Jeff Klee warns against doing so, as you could get stuck with a nasty early-morning flight or lose your seat altogether.

"The best flights on the most popular days generally fill up first, or at least run out of seats in the lowest fare categories," he told The Huffington Post. "If you wait, you can still find a comparable airfare, but you're going to have to be a lot more flexible."

Holiday flights are predicted to run cheaper overall this year, following an airline industry trend toward cheaper tickets for the rest of 2015. We recommend using tools like ITA Matrix and Google Flights (whose super easy-to-use interface is powered by ITA Matrix) to find the best deals. And remember, there's no longer a "perfect" day to purchase:

Also on HuffPost:

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