Travel Advice: Thanksgiving Air Travel

Air Date:
Heard On The Larry Meiller Show

Larry Meiller gets advice for buying air tickets for Thanksgiving travel, plus answers to listeners’ travel questions.

Featured in this Show

  • For Thanksgiving Travel, Blogger Says To Get The ‘Better Bad Deal’

    Thanksgiving is a wonderful holiday, full of family, food, fun, and football. But when air travel is necessary to enjoy those traditions, it can turn into an expensive and stressful experience.

    If it seems like everyone is traveling that weekend, Rick Seaney said there’s a good reason for that. The CEO and co-founder of FareCompare.com said that according to the state Department of Transportation, for the past three years, the Wednesday right before Thanksgiving and the Sunday after are the two busiest travel days of the year.

    Those two days that are the busiest are also the most expensive, Seaney said. So adjusting which days to fly can bring down the cost. In addition, FareCompare.com staff found a high rate of flight delays and cancellations on those days, which is another incentive for avoiding them.

    There is no magic way to avoid the crowds and the costs, other than celebrating weeks before or after. But Seaney had advice to share on how to at least find the “better bad deal.”

    For the best deal on a Thanksgiving flight, Seaney recommended flying on Thanksgiving Day. “You can either come in that morning or leave that night,” he said, “and you can still catch all the family, food and football you need.”

    If flying on the holiday itself isn’t appealing, Seaney said that the Monday and Tuesday before, as well as the Friday after, are notably less expensive than those high demand days that bookend the long weekend.

    Checking fares out of nearby airports is also a good tactic, Seaney said, especially if the flight is 90 minutes or longer. “It’s really the flights over an hour and a half that you see these huge increases,” he said. Some cities will be cheaper because of more route competition or other factors and that can mean significant savings.

    As for when to buy tickets for Thanksgiving air travel, Seaney said that in this case, there is no such thing as shopping too early. There is virtually no risk of paying too much by buying too soon, and prices will only get higher, and flights will more likely be sold out, the closer it gets to that fourth Thursday in November.

Episode Credits

  • Larry Meiller Host
  • Judith Siers-Poisson Producer
  • Rick Seaney Guest

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