Best Booking Tactics for Deals on Holiday Flights This Year

Last year’s holiday travel season was something of a disappointment for many Americans, as COVID-19’s winter surge intensified and officials begged people to stay at home to avoid adding more proverbial fuel to the fire.

Folks had to weigh their longing to visit loved ones against the risk of contracting the virus themselves or unwittingly transmitting it to their friends and family, especially the elderly and at-risk. As a result, many people canceled their end-of-year travel plans and many families found themselves separated during Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hannukah, Kwanza, New Year’s, etc.

Now that COVID-19 vaccination rates are up and people are feeling more confident about flying, airlines are expecting that more travelers will head home for the holidays this year. American Airlines has already added so-called “flex flying”, essentially meaning that it adds extra late-night flights into its schedule on strategic days.

“It’s on specific days where we have more capacity, like two days before Thanksgiving and two days after Thanksgiving,” John Daley, managing director for American Airlines at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport told USA Today reporter Melissa Yeager.

Scott Keyes, founder of airfare deals site Scott’s Cheap Flights told the outlet that, for people heading home or on vacation during the holiday season who are in search of affordable fares, now is the time to start looking for options. He also offered a few expert tips and pieces of advice on how to find reasonable rates on airfare.

When Is the Best Time To Book?

Keyes said to think about finding deals on airfare the same way you would about seasonal items like swimsuits or winter coats—you’ll find them on sale during the season that’s opposite of when you plan on using them.

“I’ll get asked, ‘How do you get cheap Christmas flights?’ and they’ll ask me around Thanksgiving and I’m just like, oh, I wish you’d asked me four months ago,” Keyes said. “Now is the time that you really ought to be booking if you’re hoping to travel at Christmas or New Year’s.”

He also noted that the busiest days of any holiday travel period are typically the Friday preceding the holiday itself and the Monday that follows it. Plan to fly on a day outside of those high-demand ones, or even on the holiday itself, if you’re looking for cheaper fares.

Take Advantage of Flexible Booking Policies

Understandably, folks may feel wary of booking flights too far ahead of time, only to later discover that a COVID-19 surge, new travel restrictions or some other unforeseen factor will force them to cancel. Fortunately, the widespread sense of uncertainty seeded by the pandemic convinced airlines American, Delta and United to adopt flexible change and cancelation policies in 2020. Southwest Airlines’ policy has always been flexible, meaning that customers can book now, and cancel or change their flight later on.

Still, be sure to read the details of your airline’s cancelation policy, and find out whether cancelation would result in a refund or a future flight credit. Some low-cost airlines have reverted to their stricter cancelation and change policies, so be sure to understand the terms fully before booking.

Disregard Bad Advice and Baseless Myths

Keyes also addressed some popular misconceptions about how to snag great deals on flights. For instance, the myth that you should “book on a Tuesday at 1:00 p.m.” doesn’t actually apply in the 21st century.

“It hasn’t been true for years, for decades,” Keyes said. He acknowledged that this advice may have been helpful more than 20 years back when human beings were manually loading flight schedules once a week (typically on a Tuesday). But, since computers took over that job, today’s fares are much more dynamic, with airlines constantly adjusting pricing.

“Nowadays airfares are set algorithmically, not by a human loading them up once a week. And the airfare is much more volatile today than it was before, when it was changing on a much slower cadence,” Keyes said.

Among the other myths about how to find low-priced plane tickets is the idea that you should clear cookies from your computer or conduct your searches in incognito mode. Keyes said that’s sheer hokum and that the reason fares may fluctuate is likely related to other passengers booking the same flight in between your multiple searches, causing the cost of the remaining seats to rise. Or, a new fare may have been implemented and the search engine is still catching up.

Keyes’ company conducts thousands of airfare searches daily and he said his team of flight experts would’ve been the first to notice it if cookies indeed had any influence on repeated searches. He actually produced a YouTube video in which he debunks this myth by checking and repeatedly rechecking a route from Denver to London. “I did it a hundred times in a row and recorded it just to show you it does not impact the fare,” Keyes said.