Holiday airfare is rising: What to know if you havent booked yet

Updated at : 01 Dec, 2022

Airfares soared this holiday season — up dramatically from last year and plane higher than pre-pandemic 2019.

If you haven’t started looking at your flight options for Christmas or New Year’s yet (and you should if you plan on traveling for one of these holidays), you may be disappointed at what you find.

Since late summer, travel experts have been recommending travelers to typesetting holiday airfare as soon as possible and no later than the middle of October. That’s considering fares for Christmas travel averaged $430 per ticket — a 53% increase from 2021 levels and a 17% increase from 2019 — virtually then, equal to an October wringer by travel site Hopper.

Now, with Christmas only 25 days yonder and New Year’s a mere 31 days away, you may find an plane loftier price tag, depending on your destination and travel dates.

That’s not to say any semblance of a good (or at least halfway decent) deal is gone, though. While there were many disruptions to air travel this summer, it’s moreover been a volatile year for airfare, making the price you pay all the increasingly unpredictable.

Costs skyrocketed during the first half of 2022 as airlines dealt with a combination of inflation and rising fuel prices; there was moreover an uneven supply and demand equation as interest in travel roared when to life without two-plus years of disruptions due to the pandemic. Late in the summer, as passengers began to satisfy their pent-up cravings to travel, prices came lanugo a bit but have often remained well whilom those seen in past years.

Even with summer far overdue us, holiday travel has experienced a strong comeback this year. In fact, the Sunday without Thanksgiving, Nov. 27, was the busiest travel day for passenger traffic since the start of the pandemic, equal to data from the Transportation Security Administration.

The demand is sure to be there for the upcoming holidays as well. Therefore, as the season draws near, experts suggest vicarial fast.

“Airfare scrutinizingly unchangingly goes one direction in the final weeks surpassing travel, and it’s not down,” Scott Keyes, founder of airfare tracking site Scott’s Cheap Flights, told TPG.

At the same time, we know plenty of travelers who want to get yonder for Christmas and New Year’s but have yet to book. If you’re one of them, here are some tips and translating to undergo by as you squint to lock in airfare for the holidays.

A plane leaves the gate zone at LaGuardia Airport (LGA) in New York. SEAN CUDAHY/THE POINTS GUY

Book holiday flights as soon as possible

What to expect when looking to typesetting Christmas and New Year’s flights

Christmas Day 2021 travelers at Boston Logan International Airport (BOS). BOSTON GLOBE/GETTY IMAGES

In past years, the mantra has been, “Book Christmas flights by Thanksgiving.”

This year, however, airfare experts recommended booking all holiday travel as soon as possible — ideally surpassing Thanksgiving, as waiting until without the holiday could be a gamble.

“My translating to travelers now is that if you find flights with a user-friendly schedule and fares that fit your budget, typesetting them,” airline industry reviewer Henry Harteveldt told TPG older this fall. “Don’t try to game the system.”

Can you typesetting holiday flights now and transpiration them later?

Travelers trammels in on Christmas Eve 2021 at Dulles International Airport (IAD). BLOOMBERG/GETTY IMAGES

Booking all holiday travel at the same time this year may seem a bit daunting from a numismatic standpoint. Not to mention, sometimes it takes a while for holiday plans to solidify.

It begs the question: If you typesetting now and find a cheaper flight later, can you transpiration your trip? Or, if your plans change, can you cancel your flight? By and large, the wordplay to both is yes but with some important caveats to know.

For the four largest U.S. carriers — American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, Southwest Airlines and United Airlines — you can now transpiration your ticket without paying a transpiration fee. Generally, if you find a cheaper flight lanugo the road, you can rebook and get airline flight credits for the price difference between the two flights, which you could use on a future trip. You can alternatively opt for a full refund when canceling certain higher-level tickets or when using miles in some programs.

As for this flexibility on American, Delta and United, it often applies to domestic flights and all flights originating in North America, depending on the airline. Trammels your carrier’s individual policy if you’re looking to transpiration an international flight.

Remember, American, Delta and United exclude vital economy tickets from this flexibility. So, if you think you might want to make a transpiration later on, you’re largest off booking a regular economy ticket and not a highly restrictive one.

Is it too late to typesetting holiday flights?

Sure, you might have gotten a largest deal if you’d booked your holiday flights in September. However, if you’re just now starting to trammels airfare for Christmas and New Year’s and are finding the prices a bit daunting, here are some tricks and tactics you can try to bring financing lanugo and stave headaches.

Be flexible with your travel dates

If you’re plugging in your destination and travel dates for the holidays and find prices are exorbitant, see if you can be a bit increasingly flexible. While work, school and life don’t unchangingly indulge for a lot of flexibility, alimony in mind that having fewer requirements for your travel needs can help you capture the weightier deals.

For example, let’s say I’m in Washington, D.C., looking to fly to New Jersey to visit family for Christmas but have a pretty rigid schedule that prevents me from stuff worldly-wise to leave later than 5 p.m. on Dec. 21, requires valedictory from Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA) and includes returning the Tuesday without Christmas since I have to be at work the next day. I’ve now put a lot of “filters” on my travel, so I’m severely restricting the number of deals I’ll be worldly-wise to find.

The cheapest itinerary I found that fits all of these parameters goes for $237 on United.

GOOGLE FLIGHTS

Now, let’s try subtracting a little flexibility to my search. Can I work remotely on the days leading into and/or out of the holiday? Could I perhaps plane work remotely up until New Year’s? Or, would it be possible to expand my search to include other D.C. airports and a wider range of times? Any of these tweaks would certainly help.

By adjusting my return stage to Jan. 2 instead of the rented Sunday travel day, I have a number of round-trip options on United to segregate from for $168. This one transpiration gets me a savings of well-nigh 29%.

GOOGLE FLIGHTS

Obviously, if you need to stay in a hotel for increasingly nights considering of extending your trip, that can quickly offset what you’re saving on flights. However, if you are happy to stay with family for a few increasingly days, it could be a way to save some mazuma and enjoy a longer getaway at the same time.

Opening up your search goes a long way to increasing the odds you’ll find largest flight prices.

Fly on the holiday, if you can

If your search still isn’t turning up satisfactory prices for the days surrounding the holiday, one option you might want to explore is flying early on the holiday itself, whether it’s Christmas or New Year’s.

It’s not ideal, and we hate to miss precious time with family. However, prices can often be lower for flights on a holiday.

I’ve moreover personally found that holiday morning flights can be relatively pleasant, with thinner crowds in the airports compared to the often upturned days surrounding the major holidays.

Whether this is a realistic option depends, of course, on your family’s particular triumph plans, but it’s something to consider if you’re not finding any affordable flights immediately surpassing or without the holiday.

Consider volitional destinations

Another way to skirt upper holiday airfares is to go where the prices are lower. If you have to visit a particular municipality for the holidays and the prices are high, you don’t have a lot of wiggle room.

Consider this: Is there any endangerment of meeting family in an volitional municipality instead of traveling to someone’s house? Could you pick an volitional vacation destination virtually Christmas and New Year’s? Thinking outside the box can indulge you to select airfare based on the weightier prices, rather than stuff at the mercy of prices to a particular city.

You can use Google Flights to show you airfare prices to places virtually the country — or the globe — on the dates you want to travel.

Hold a flight when possible

If you’ve found airfare you like but aren’t 100% sure of your plans yet, put a hold on it.

Some airlines will let you put a hold or fare lock on airfare if you find a price and itinerary that will work for your travel needs but are not ready to typesetting just yet. It’s one of my favorite ways to requite myself increasingly time to make up my mind.

On United, you can pay a small fee to lock in airfare — a few dollars will often get you a few days — without which you can either purchase the trip or cancel it.

Keep in mind, if the airline doesn’t indulge you to hold a flight, federal regulations require the carrier to requite you 24 hours to cancel and get a full refund, so it’s not a problem if you typesetting your flight and then quickly transpiration your mind.

Once again, if you find a largest price later, most airlines will let you cancel and switch to a new trip with no penalty (on domestic trips at least), provided it wasn’t a vital economy fare.

Use Capital One Travel’s price protection feature

Another tool you can use if you are shopping for holiday airfare with travel credit cards like the Capital One Venture X Rewards Credit Card is the Capital One price protection feature.

With this feature, you can leverage Capital One’s relationship with Hopper to use the site’s airfare algorithms to suggest whether you typesetting now or wait for prices to drop. This can make you eligible for a credit in the event the price unexpectedly drops.

Christmas Eve 2021 at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA). BLOOMBERG

Don’t forget to trammels ribbon pricing, but tread carefully

Certainly, if you have miles saved up, it’s unchangingly unconfined to typesetting flights without having to shell out cash.

Just be expressly shielding virtually the holidays to vet whether you’re getting a good redemption for your hard-earned miles. While the mazuma prices aren’t well-flavored for Christmas and New Year’s, the ribbon prices might be plane worse. This can be expressly true as increasingly airlines shift to revenue-based ribbon pricing models that remove a layer of predictability from what you pay in points and miles.

Resources like TPG’s points and miles valuations and awards versus mazuma calculator can be a unconfined way to determine whether you’re largest off using mazuma or your miles.

Yes, plane a poor value redemption can save you a permafrost of money. However, remember that you won’t have those miles when spring and summer come virtually and you’re looking to typesetting a vacation.

It’s still worth checking, though, not only to alimony mazuma in your pocket but moreover considering there are sometimes good premium motel awards misogynist (since there’s virtually no merchantry travel during holiday weeks). Additionally, miles can be your fallback plan while you squint for something largest since many U.S. programs now indulge self-ruling changes or cancellations on awards, at least, up until a unrepealable point.

Bottom line

If you’re thinking of flying for Christmas or New Year’s, act fast.

You may have waited until the weather got a bit potation to start planning your holiday travel, but there are still some decent options available. However, if you want to stave the worst fares, booking all your holiday travel early would’ve been your weightier bet this year.