Playing the holiday airfare game

By Susan Stellin
September 30, 2010

TWO days after Labor Day, my sister asked if I had booked airline tickets for Christmas, which felt like rounding the corner on a back-to-school supplies display and running smack into Santa Claus.

No, I haven’t booked a ticket for Christmas, made plans for Thanksgiving or even put away my summer clothes yet. But at this point, it probably is time to lock in a flight for Thanksgiving, and it can’t hurt to start tracking fares for December or New Year’s trips.

The million-dollar question is whether prices are likely to go up or down — and the answer is: no one really knows. Airfare will definitely rise, and holiday fares are likely to be higher this year than they were in 2009. But if the economy sputters and people aren’t willing to pay the prices airlines are charging now for late-December travel, fares may actually decline as we get deeper into the fall.

Since most people who fly home for the holidays know what they usually pay, let that price be your guide — and don’t book too soon if you feel as though you’re being gouged.

“If your ticket is running $350 to $400, go ahead and snap it up,” said Rick Seaney, chief executive of FareCompare.com, referring to ahypothetical holiday round-trip fare. “The key is to pay $300 or $400 for your tickets and not $600 to $800.”

Although Mr. Seaney warned last year about the perils of booking late for the holiday season, in retrospect, he said, “last year turned out to be O.K. for procrastinators.”

So whether you’re shopping for the holidays or just want to sneak in a weekend getaway this fall — a cheap time to travel — here are some ways to find more affordable flights.

Use Flexible Date Tools

“Be flexible with your travel dates” is advice everyone has heard, but technology is finally making it easier to find those cheaper dates without spending days on a computer.

Some airlines, like Continental and United, now offer a “my dates are flexible” or “search plus or minus 3 days” option on their home page; others, like JetBlue, Southwest and Spirit, automatically show prices for nearby days when they display results for the dates you search. So if you’re not seeing this type of calendar — showing you, for example, that a $139 fare on Monday is only $119 on Sunday — look for an “advanced search” link that may include this feature, or try shopping somewhere else.

Travel search engines like Travelocity, Orbitz, Kayak, FareCompare and Expedia all offer some type of flexible search option. Travelocity has two choices: looking at prices within a few days of the ones you specify, or searching for the best price for a particular itinerary within the next several months.

When it comes to booking holiday travel, comparing dates is especially important since most airlines are now levying “peak travel” surcharges of $10 to $30 on the most popular days to fly. FareCompare’s peak travel chart shows when these fees are lower.

Check Multiple Airports

Another often-cited tip is to compare prices to or from different airports, but it’s a step people sometimes skip because it can be such a chore. Once again, technology can save you the trouble of multiple searches or suggest airports you hadn’t considered.

For instance, if you’re flying to Los Angeles, there are five airports you might check: Los Angeles International, Burbank, Long Beach, Orange County and Ontario. Heading to southern Florida? Miami, Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach are all options you should consider, but that’s easier if you seek out tools that do the work for you.

On Delta.com, you have to select the “advanced booking” link to see the “my airports are flexible” option; American lets you select on its home page airports within 30, 60 or 90 miles of the ones you enter. Kayak offers the choice to “include nearby airports” on its home page, or lets you select San Francisco and Oakland and leave out San Jose, even displaying a map so you can judge how far you want to drive.

That’s going to become more of a consideration for people flying to or from smaller cities, which are bearing the brunt of recent airfare increases because there’s less competition on those routes. It may be worth driving to a hub airport to save money on your ticket, but consider the cost of gas, parking and any difference in car rental prices.

Sign Up for Fare Alerts

Services that alert you when there’s a good deal on a flight have been around for a while, but the tools are getting better, offering more ways to track prices.

AirfareWatchdog lets you sign up for fare alerts from specific airports; if you live in New York, you can get e-mails listing deals from Kennedy, LaGuardia and Newark (and you can choose how often you want to be bothered). If you want to hear about sales on only one route, you can specify that — and George Hobica, AirfareWatchdog’s founder, promises that subscribers are notified only about great deals.

“If New York to Los Angeles is $400 round trip, we don’t send out an alert,” he said. “But if it goes down to $280 on a nonstop, we will.”

FareCompare offers a similar e-mail fare alert service, as well as an iPhone app and a Twitter feed, so you can choose how you want to be notified about deals. Expedia has a downloadable fare alert application for your computer desktop, as does Southwest, which also has an iPhone app for its alerts. Travelocity’s FareWatcher Plus service will watch up to 10 destinations and notify you about any deals.

Almost every travel site offers some type of fare alert service, so you can now choose the routes you want to track and how you want to be notified.

Let Your Budget Guide You

Henry Harteveldt, an analyst with Forrester Research, said that nearly half of leisure travelers let their budget dictate their destination, but Web sites don’t generally help customers answer questions like, “Where can I go for $1,000 next weekend?”

There are a few attempts to move in that direction. Kayak lets travelers looking for inspiration choose a departure point, a budget and when they’d like to travel, and then view a map showing prices to destinations that fit those parameters. Lufthansa’s Tripfinder is a similar tool, and Travelocity’s Travel Deals section tries to do the same (though it’s clunky to navigate).

But I’m with Mr. Harteveldt — travel Web sites have a way to go before they can match an agent’s ability to pair a budget with an ideal itinerary.

As for holiday travel, he, too, cautioned not to jump the gun. “Don’t buy a ticket now if the price seems to be too high,” he said. “It’s possible a holiday travel period fare war may start.”

Budget Travel inc 2010 Airfare News Index:
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Ask Budget Travel incabout Christmas airline tickets

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about Christmas airline tickets