Now that fall has officially arrived (though at least here in Seattle, for one more day it still feels like summer), I thought it’d be a good time to take a look at what’s going on with airfares over the next three months.
In order to dig into the data, I looked at the routes we track in the Bing Travel 100 Index, and checked the average price by departure date over the next 90 days. I’ve used red dots to mark Sundays, in order to make the graph easier to read.
The big hump labeled “Thanksgiving” represents the week around Thanksgiving (Nov. 26), and the second spike at the end of December is the lead-in to Christmas.
Looking at this graph, it’s easy to make a few observations:
1. Holiday travel really commands a premium! On average, you’ll pay about $75 more to fly around Thanksgiving than you would during the rest of the fall. If you’re not that into turkey or cranberry sauce (and if you have a really flexible boss), taking a “fakesgiving” holiday during a different week could be a good way to see friends and family on the cheap.
2. Outside of the holidays, fares are pretty consistent for the whole season, and not that expensive. October, early November and early December are all hovering around the $230 mark, which is quite affordable for the indexed markets.
3. To save money, consider avoiding traveling on Sundays. Outside of the holidays, each Sunday (represented by a red dot) is more expensive than the surrounding days. Flying on Saturday instead can save you an average of $13 per ticket, which means that for many itineraries that strategy will save you even more!
4. As I point out in our holiday forecast each year, if you’re willing to fly on Thanksgiving Day, you can usually get a much better fare than you would on the day before. (See how sharply the graph drops?) If you look carefully, you’ll also see that on average you’ll save even more by traveling the day after Thanksgiving — but you’ll probably miss Thanksgiving dinner if you do that, so I don’t recommend it.
Of course, all this information doesn’t do you much good if you’re just sitting at home. Go out and find a deal and see the world! Happy travels!
