It’s All About the Six-Week Sweetspot
With Labor Day over and summer officially in the books, it’s time to shift your travel vision to planning your holiday flights, and when to buy that airfare is perhaps one of the most contentious topics, debated by travel companies, pundits, and experts alike.
After analyzing our historical data, we discovered that the best week to lock in your Turkey Day ticket is the week of October 3 and for Christmas it’s one month later, the week of November 7. However, the US is vast and the airport markets vary, so we broke down our data further, to separate the larger markets from the smaller ones. Here’s what we found:
Top 20 Markets
In larger cities that see a high volume of travelers and exist in a market served by all major airlines, holiday pricing tends to follow a fairly standard pattern for the optimal time to buy, but the savings differs quite a bit by market. We put together a market-level price savings chart so you can see just how much you will save. In some markets like Orlando, it’s a hefty 50 percent savings.
"When we crunched the numbers, we surmised that six weeks out, which means the week of October 3rd for Thanksgiving and November 7th for Christmas, will be the general 'point of no return' this year when it comes to airfare," said Dr. Chris Miller, Hipmunk Data Scientist.
"During those two weeks, an average traveler will likely pay about 14 percent less than the most expensive holiday airfare available this year to the same place. But that's just an aggregate average. Depending on the destinations, savings will range from 10 to more than 50 percent. Once you're within the six-week window, prices will take some big jumps."
Smaller Markets
When we analyzed the US airfare data outside of the top 20 airports, it became clear that there was a lot more noise, and that singling out a specific week would be a bit more difficult. Further, holiday prices are on average 18 percent higher for Thanksgiving and 20 percent higher for Christmas than in the top 20 markets.
We found that the best time to buy for Thanksgiving is the week of Sep. 5 or (if you can wait) Nov. 14. For Christmas it is the week of Oct.12 or (again, if you can wait) Dec. 12.
Here’s what the week-over-week medians for the rest of the US (with top 20 airports removed) for Thanksgiving and Christmas:
Based on our data, prices for less-traveled routes see more fluctuation. We recommend that if you are flying into an airport outside of the top 20, it’s best to set a fare alert (like, now) to track your specific route. Here’s a helpful video to show you how.
So tell us, what are your best tips for securing low holiday airfare?