How to Find Cheap New Year’s Airfare

While some people focus on the family-oriented holidays of Thanksgiving and Christmas at this time of year, others prefer to focus on the fun-filled party-oriented holiday of New Year’s. If you’re lucky enough to have a party night to look forward to at New Years, and luckier still to have vacation time leftover after your other holiday trips, then your next step is to look for ways to save money on an airplane ticket at New Years. Because even if you’ve got the time, your wallet is likely to be a bit thinner after buying all those Christmas gifts.

Getting a cheap fare at other holidays this season – like Thanksgiving and Christmas – can be quite difficult. But although New Year’s travel doesn’t tend to be as costly as those others, this is still a trip you’ll want to do some research about beforehand so you don’t spend too much on your ticket.

Unfortunately, New Year’s travel is like other holiday travel in that just moving your intended flight dates around a day or two doesn’t always result in a huge drop in prices. There’s a big block of time around all these holidays during which the airlines just charge more for flights – because they can. But even within those blocks there are ways you can find cheap airfare at New Year’s, which we’ll look at in this article.

If you’re one of the people who’s combining Christmas travel with New Year’s travel, be sure to read our tips on finding Christmas travel deals as well, in order to get the most complete picture.

>> New Year’s Eve in 2012 is a Monday, and New Year’s Day in 2013 is a Tuesday

Plan & book well in advance.

If you’ve been paying attention to our series on holiday travel tips, this one will sound familiar – but it’s worth repeating because it still holds true for New Year’s trips as well as the others. Although you might have a bit more time to play with when it comes to planning a trip for New Years, the fact is that enough people combine Christmas and New Years trips that the airlines don’t differentiate between the holidays much. This means that the time to begin looking at your New Year’s travel is the same time you’ll begin looking at other holiday travel – in September.

It can be as early as September that airlines start introducing their fall and winter fare sales, so it’s the perfect time to start tracking the prices on the routes you want to fly. And though you might not need to book your trip in September, it’s not a bad idea to plan to book your flights no later than the end of October – sooner if you notice that prices either stagnate or start creeping back up again.

Without checking all the booking websites every day, how can you keep track of airfares so you’re ready to book as soon as you see the ideal price? Many of those booking sites have a system where you can sign up to receive email alerts when prices either move by a certain amount that you determine or move so significantly that it warrants notice. These alerts can be a great way to keep track of prices without being a slave to each website.

>> Learn which sites let you sign up for email alerts with our guide to airfare booking websites.

Be flexible.

This is another tip which applies to other holidays, as well as travel in general – if you can be flexible with the dates and times you’re willing to fly, you can sometimes take advantage of unexpected deals. As I mentioned, simply being flexible at the holidays isn’t always enough to find a bargain, since the airlines have a pretty wide swath of the calendar blocked out over the holidays. But being a little flexible can still help you a bit.

The best thing you can do when it comes to being flexible is to learn which are the best and worst days to fly at New Year’s and plan your flights accordingly. In addition to that, it’s often beneficial to play with the times you’re planning to fly to see if you can get a better deal by flying a little earlier or a little later than you’d originally planned. Sometimes a change of a few hours can make a big difference.

>> Find out which are the best and worst days to travel at New Years

Don’t forget the discount airlines.

The big-name airlines may get all the press – and they may also show up most often on booking websites – but that doesn’t mean they’re the only airlines you should look at for your New Year’s travel plans. You may have heard of the super-budget airlines that are so successful in Europe, but the U.S. has some budget airlines you shouldn’t overlook, too.

A few of the discount airlines in the United States are:

• Southwest
• Virgin America
• jetBlue
• Spirit
• Frontier

Now, you might assume that you’d notice these budget airlines (and others) if they offered lower fares than the big legacy carriers, right? Well, the truth is that many of them don’t let their fares appear in the search results of the big booking websites, so unless you visit these airlines’ websites individually, you could be missing out on big savings.

In addition to that, however, some airlines (often the budget airlines) reserve their best prices for customers who visit their websites specifically, so even if you find a great deal on a booking website it never hurts to double check on that airline’s website before you hit the “buy” button.

>> Learn more about discount airlines in the United States and the discount airlines in Canada.

Don’t overlook alternate airports.

So, you’re being smart and checking out smaller airlines in order to save money, but did you know you can also check smaller airports to save money, too? Many big U.S. hub airports have other – smaller – airports that serve the same general area and which sometimes offer better deals.

The truth is that for most trips the smaller airports will have trouble matching or bettering the prices you’re finding on flights to and from the bigger airports – but every once in awhile there’s a route where it’s the smaller airport that can save you money. This is especially true when those smaller airports are served by one or more of the discount airlines.

How can you check for alternate airports? On many booking websites, there’s a box you can check that says something like “include nearby airports” (or some variation on that). By checking that box, you let the website do the work for you. But you can also make sure all area airports are being included by searching for fares to those airports yourself.

>> Find out which are the alternative airports for the biggest US hubs.

photo by Frapestaartje