Best Time to Buy Airline Tickets for the Holidays

Every year, as the holiday season approaches, people realize they have to purchase a plane ticket home for the holidays, and then the process of trying to figure out how to get the best deal on a flight begins. The Huffington Post has suggestions for finding the best deal with the least amount of effort.

Conventional wisdom has been that buying tickets on a Tuesday morning warrants the best price, but a recent study found that weekend bookings could save travelers five percent on the fares. Meanwhile, Rick Seaney of FareCompare.com says that Tuesday afternoon is the best time to buy. This contradictory information is very confusing for travelers.

Kayak, a travel booking website has the cheapest holiday airfare available between September and mid-October. Wait any longer than that and you will pay 17 percent more for a Thanksgiving flight and 51 percent more for a Christmas flight. If you're traveling internationally, book as far in advance as possible.

Jeremy Boore, a travel analyst for Expedia.com, told the Huffington Post that he recommends purchasing tickets for Christmas travel between the end of September and early October. He says international flights can be booked as late as the beginning of November.

So what is the bottom line?

If you're traveling domestically around Thanksgiving, book a flight that departs on either Monday or Tuesday, with experts from both Kayak and Expedia in agreement on this point.

For the return flight, the cheapest tickets are to return on Thanksgiving Day itself, or that Friday or Saturday.

For Christmas travel, the cheapest tickets are as close to Christmas as possible, with Expedia's expert even suggesting Christmas Eve.

For the return flight, the best prices are on flights that are scheduled to return and depart around the weekends.

The conclusion is that if you are traveling during the holidays, it will likely be expensive, and even the experts have some disagreement among themselves as to the best days to buy tickets and travel, so using a fare watching web site like airfarewatchdog.com may be a great option.