Now is the time to get best airfares for holidays

If you’re planning to head home or on vacation for the holidays and want to get an affordable ticket, now is the time to book.

After the pandemic caused many families to cancel their holiday plans in 2020, airlines are anticipating more travelers will want to head home this season. American Airlines has already added what it calls “flex flying.” Flex flying is when the airline adds extra flights at the end of the night on strategic days.

“It’s on specific days where we have more capacity, like two days before Thanksgiving and two days after Thanksgiving,” John Daley, managing director for American Airlines at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, told me as we toured the airline’s control center in August.

With COVID-19 vaccinations widely available, consumer confidence in air travel is rising. If you’re looking to fly, now is the time to look at your options. Here are a few things to keep in mind to get the best price.

1. The best time to book holiday flights

Scott Keyes, who founded the airfare deals site Scott’s Cheap Flights, said to imagine airfare sales like you do sales on winter coats, swimsuits or other seasonal items. You’ll find the best deals in the season opposite of when you plan to use it.

“I’ll get asked, ‘How do you get cheap Christmas flights?’ and they’ll ask me around Thanksgiving and I’m just like, oh, I wish you’d asked me four months ago,” Keyes said. “Now is the time that you really ought to be booking if you’re hoping to travel at Christmas or New Year’s.”

The busiest travel days are typically the Friday before the holiday and the Sunday and Monday after it. Book outside those peak days or fly on the holiday itself to get a better price.

2. Flexible policies mean you can book now, decide later

If you’re nervous to book holiday travel because you’re worried a coronavirus surge could cause you to cancel, here’s some good news: United, American and Delta airlines all have added flexible change policies. Southwest Airlines has always had a flexible policy.

That means you can book now and cancel if you need to later. Make sure to read your airline’s cancellation policy for the fare you choose prior to booking to see if you get a refund to your credit card or an airline credit for a future flight.

Some discount airlines have returned to their stricter pre-pandemic cancellation policies so make sure you doublecheck the rules before you book that cheap fare.

3. There is no best day to book

If you’ve heard the myth “book on a Tuesday at 1 p.m.,” I have some bad news for you. It’s not true.

“It hasn’t been true for years, for decades,” Keyes said.

Keyes said it may have been true more than 20 years ago when human beings were hand-loading schedules once a week, usually on a Tuesday. However, with computers involved, fares are much more dynamic and airlines adjust prices constantly.

“Nowadays, airfares are set algorithmically, not by a human loading them up once a week,” Keyes said. “And the airfare is much more volatile today than it was before when it was changing on a much slower cadence.”

4. Your computer’s cookies won’t make the ticket more expensive

If you’re clearing cookies or searching in incognito mode on your browser thinking you’ll get the best price, that’s a myth, too. Keyes said his company does thousands of airfare searches each day. If anyone were to see the impact of cookies on repeated searches, he said it would be him. He even recorded a video where he checked flights from Denver to London.

“I did it a hundred times in a row and recorded it just to show you it does not impact the fare,” Keyes said.

What likely happened is that other passengers booked flights between your searches, causing the price of the remaining seats to increase. Or, a new fare went into effect and the search is catching up.