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Holiday Travelers: Thanksgiving Tickets Take Off
Thanksgiving travelers: If you're flying to Grandma's and don't have your tickets yet, you'd better have cash to burn.
And if you're headed out of state for Christmas, you're at the tail end of the ripe time to shop for bargain flights.
It's not that you won't find any, said Jerry Quintana of Travel Host in Albuquerque, N.M. It's just that the best deals are gone. The airlines pull them "because they can," he said.
"They know they'll sell those seats the week before Thanksgiving," he said. Increased passenger traffic that helped drive up prices over the summer is continuing, meaning higher airfares through the holiday season.
The higher prices also had more travelers buying plane tickets early in hopes of finding better deals.
But what about those falling gas and fuel prices? Shouldn't airfares be dropping in tandem? "I haven't seen one airline that has passed on those savings," Quintana said. Although traveling on slow days -- Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Saturdays -- often can help you with that summer trip to the Oregon coast, at this point that flexibility isn't going to help you get a better holiday deal. Nor is your willingness to get to the airport by 4 a.m.
"That might help you on availability," Quintana said, "not on price." Bookings for the peak travel days -- Wednesday, Nov. 22, and Sunday, Nov. 26 -- were up 42 percent nationally as of Sept. 30 over the similar period last year, according to research by Sabre Airline Solutions.
Average airfares tracked by Sabre have returned to the levels in 2000 -- the peak year for the travel industry.
