How to Find Cheap Thanksgiving Airfare

Traveling at Thanksgiving can be one of the most stressful things you’ll do all year, but if you end up paying too much for your ticket that’s just adding insult to injury. There’s not necessarily much you can do to make the airport less crowded or the weather any more pleasant for flying, but there’s definitely something you can do to make sure you’re getting the best deal possible on your ticket.

A few somethings, in fact.

In this article we’ll look at the best ways to find cheap airfare for Thanksgiving travel, some of which are tips that will apply to non-holiday travel and some of which really are targeted to these overly busy times at the airport. For starters, you should pat yourself on the back for taking the first step in getting a deal on Thanksgiving airfare – you’re doing the research. Well done.

Now take that forward momentum further with these tips, too.

Book your trip early.

Sometimes you can score great last-minute deals on flights to exotic locales, and then spend your whole trip smugly sipping cocktails and knowing everyone around you paid double what you did. Thanksgiving is not one of those times. In fact, not only do you need to book your flight early, it’s probably even earlier than you think.

You should start looking at airfares for your desired travel dates and routes as early as September, and plan to book your trip no later than the end of October (if not before). The busiest travel days over Thanksgiving are called that for a reason – and their well-known reputation means that smart travelers are booking their trips even further in advance than they usually do in order to make sure they get the flight selection they want.

But even beyond flight selection, by booking your Thanksgiving flight in September or October you’re more likely to get to take advantage of the first waves of fall airfare sales. Prices on holiday travel will be higher than other fall/winter travel dates, but the cost will spike even more if you wait to book your trip until the last minute.

Many online booking engines now let you set up automated alerts once you create an account, and these can be particularly handy when you’re looking for a deal on holiday flights. Set an alert to email you when the ticket you’re looking at goes either up or down by an amount you choose, and then you’ll be able to react quickly when the price changes.

>> Learn more about how to use different ticket sites to see which ones let you set up these alerts.

Be flexible with your travel dates & times.

As you’ve already read, there are always dates which are the best and worst days to travel over Thanksgiving. Knowing which is which is a good place to start, as the “best” days are more likely to yield travel deals than the “worst” days, but your date selection process shouldn’t end there.

Flexibility is key whenever you’re looking for a deal on airfare, and that’s even more true when you’re talking about holiday travel. This can be challenging if you’ve got a job with limited vacation time or a school schedule that won’t allow for an extended break, but if you can finagle more time off or have no fixed schedule then you can save lots of money by choosing the cheaper days to fly.

How do you find those cheaper days? One easy method is to take advantage of the feature many online booking engines have that lets you search additional travel dates on either side of the ones you enter. It may say “my dates are flexible,” or let you determine how many days on either side of your chosen date it will search, but this will help you get an idea of whether you’re just one day away from saving big. You can do this manually if the booking engine doesn’t have the ability built-in by simply testing several dates.

You also want to be flexible with your travel times. Morning flights tend to be busier and more expensive than flights later in the day, especially in the couple of days before Thanksgiving, and you may find a bargain red-eye flight if your search is expanded enough.

>> Being flexible can mean you’re spending more time than you’d like to at the airport, so read up on these airport survival tips for Thanksgiving travel before you go.

Don’t overlook the airlines that aren’t listed with online booking engines.

While online booking sites can be great time-savers, they also exclude many budget airlines which could save you money on your trip. They’re not doing this to be annoying (at least we don’t think they are), but rather it’s because many smaller or discount airlines don’t share their information with the big online booking engines. So to get price quotes from those airlines, you’ll need to visit their individual websites separately.

Some of the airlines you’ll want to make sure to check individually are:

• Southwest
• jetBlue
• Spirit
• Frontier
• Virgin America
• Allegiant
• USA3000
• Sun Country

You may find that some of these airlines are included in some searches and not others – it can be a bit difficult to keep track of what airlines provide their information to the search engines and which don’t, not to mention keeping track of what airlines are still in business. Also note that some of these discount airlines are so small as to not even serve the area you’re flying into or out of – you’ll know which ones to ignore from that list by knowing which ones don’t sound familiar to you at all.

And even if the airlines you fly have their deals listed with the search engines you’re looking at, it never hurts to do the same search on that airline’s website anyway. Many airlines reserve their best deals for sales on their sites, so just before you hit that “buy” button be sure you’ve checked the airline’s website as well.

Look at discount airlines instead of just legacy carriers.

This tip goes sort of hand-in-hand with the one above it, in that many of the discount airlines in the United States (and around the world) are the ones that don’t appear in online booking engine searches. But we’re separating it out and making it its very own tip for one simple reason: too many people forget it.

Planning a trip at a busy time like Thanksgiving makes us prone to snap judgements and stupid mistakes, so good advice should be repeated until it’s second nature. Just because an airline is smaller, serves a shorter list of cities, or doesn’t have fancy amenities doesn’t mean it can’t get you from A to B just the same as the big airlines. And in many cases, those smaller airlines can do it cheaper.

Discount airlines to check, depending on where you’re going, include:

• Southwest
• jetBlue
• AirTran
• Spirit
• Frontier
• Allegiant
• USA3000
• Sun Country

>> For more information about discount airlines, here are the budget airlines in the United States and the budget airlines that fly to Canada

Check for airport alternatives.

On a normal travel day, you might not think about any airports other than the ones closest to your home and your destination. But Thanksgiving isn’t a normal travel day.

Many cities have more than one airport to choose from, if you don’t mind being a little further from your final destination or driving a little further to fly out. In some cases you’ll have a choice between 3-4 airports, but in most cases you should feel lucky if you’ve got 2 to pick from. No matter where you’re going, however, you should definitely check all your options.

In most cases, the big hub airport in your region will be the one with the cheapest flights – but this isn’t always going to be the case. Sometimes smaller airports charge airlines less to operate there, and the airlines can pass those savings on to you.

It’s definitely worth checking all your airport options, even if you think you know which one will be cheaper. Doing this is easy with many of the online booking engines now, which allow you to “include nearby airports” in your searches for both your departure and your arrival airport.

>> Here’s a list of some of the alternative airports to major US airports.

Change the day you celebrate.

Okay, this last one’s a little radical, but if you can swing it it’s not only a money-saver but a time-saver as well. For most people in the US, Thanksgiving is a four-day weekend – and although the holiday is technically on Thursday, there’s no real reason why you can’t have your Thanksgiving feast on Friday or even Saturday.

By shifting the holiday to Friday, for instance, you can fly on Thanksgiving itself – a day when fares are typically lower than the days on either side of it – and enjoy not only lower prices but (usually) a less crowded airport as well. You might still be flying back at a busy time, like the Sunday or Monday after Thanksgiving, but if you really want to complete the going-against-the-grain picture you’ll fly back home on the Tuesday after Thanksgiving. That way you’re avoiding high ticket prices, big crowds, and too much stress in both directions of your trip.

Now, obviously you’ve got to convince your whole family to join you in the big holiday shift, or it won’t work. But it’s worth a shot.

photo by Velo Steve