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I was working on some information the other day as background for an article about the cheapest days to travel around the peak holidays (posted today the New York Times). I put together a couple of diagrams based on out the door roundtrip airline ticket prices (above ) in order to show the”hot spots” — travel days bracketing each holiday with the cheapest and highest prices. This information is based on a handful of city pairs departing New York to (Palm Beach, Tampa, Los Angeles, Chicago) and subsequent returns… |
Although this is a small sample of city pairs it is pretty indicative of the cheapest holiday travel days. Yes!, your holiday airline tickets should already be in hand, if not, here are my rules of thumb for procrastinating holiday travel shoppers:
- Go into the purchasing process knowing your are going to pay a premium - the trick is to pay the least premium
- Expect to pay $40-80 more for peak flight times (morning and afternoon) and $40-80 more for non-stops
- Be flexible - both on your departure days and times within a day - the difference can be hundreds of dollars per person
- Shop early - normally I recommend people start shopping for domestic travel 4 months in advance - for peak holidays I recommend shopping year round
- Stay away from the days before and the weekend after the holiday, they are the most expensive and busiest
- Travel on the “day of” the holiday to get the cheapest deal
- Some city pairs like Chicago to New York are a bargain at $200 roundtrip across the board (count yourself lucky if you are in a highly competitive market)
- Once you have your airline tickets in hand be prepared and patient, you are likely to be in for a a long, cramped day of traveling
The bottom line is that airlines have been studying consumer buying patterns for years, they know when you want to go, where you want to go and how much you are willing to pay — they “can” and “will” get a premium price. In the diagrams above the middle day is Thanksgiving and Christmas and prices are based on departing before and on the holiday and returning on or after the holiday (I wish I had more real estate for wider images …)
You can compare holiday travel to the $600 IPhone, if the demand is high you will pay a serious premium — and don’t bet on the holiday spirit of the airlines providing a $200 refund (or voucher as it were) after you complain a bit …
The easiest way to actually read the charts is to save the image to your favorite image location and then open them in an image editor (Paint Shop Pro, Illustrator, (Paint if you HAVE to)) and then zoom in. Alternate airports are also important. While I am flying BOS to DFW for about $230 at Christmas, I can still get tickets for Providence to DFW for less than $200.
Comment by Roger — September 27, 2007 @ 8:55 am
A tip from a web designer to Rick - Replace the chart in this post with a higher resolution (bigger) image, and in the code view, add a height and width to the image like this:
Now when we click on the image, it’ll pop open at the regular (larger) image dimensions.
Hope that helps.
Comment by Brian — September 27, 2007 @ 11:16 am
Always grateful to farecompare.com for their analyses.
I’ve found that for the DFW-FLL route I’ve got to purchase 5 months ahead to get the cheapest non-stop from American which never seems to match the really cheapest fare in that market.
So 5 months ago I purchased both Thanksgiving and Christmas-NewYears flights and got the cheapest “premium” non-stop fares. I couldn’t have done it without farecompare.com…my heroes
Comment by Rich — September 27, 2007 @ 11:23 am
I do a lot of traveling, especially weekend, because I live in Denver and my boyfriend lives in Chicago. So, I’ve gotten good at hunting around for reasonable airfares. I’ve been piecing together my own itineraries on separate airlines. I was looking into going home to Buffalo for Christmas. The most ideal (sorta) non-stop deal was on United and was over $900. Instead, I decided to fly to Chicago Friday evening on Frontier, out of Chicago Saturday morning and back on Sunday on Southwest, and back to Denver Monday morning on United (the most expensive leg). I ended up paying around $550 total.
Comment by Maria — September 27, 2007 @ 11:10 pm
I am alway grateful for farecompare.com and Rick I have been subscribing to his website for years and save much money with his help. Thanks again
Comment by Miriam Rodriguez — September 28, 2007 @ 12:35 am
Thanks for the chart, but I’ve already booked Xmas travel with no problems on United using my frequent flyer miles. I got exactly the times and days that I wanted to fly including the weekend before Xmas with no extra miles being taken from my account.
Comment by Lori — September 28, 2007 @ 11:23 am