As anyone who travels frequently knows, airfare costs around the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays can be significantly higher than those for the same route at other times of the year. It’s little surprise why: the year-end holiday period sees millions traveling to visit family and friends, creating demand for flights; the more demand, the more airlines can charge.

The good news, according to travel experts at Google Flights, is that if you are planning to fly for Thanksgiving or Christmas, you still have a small window of time to get the lowest airfare possible for the winter holiday 2026 period before prices go up—but you have to act fast.

If you know you are going to be traveling by plane this Thanksgiving—and you haven’t purchased your tickets yet—you shouldn’t wait much longer. As a matter of fact, the ideal time to purchase your Thanksgiving flights may have just passed.

According to a blog post from the travel experts at Google Flights, the search giant’s flight aggregator and comparison tool, there is a period before the holiday when flights are generally at their lowest. This period is generally 21 days to 57 days before departure.

So, if your Thanksgiving flight departure date is actually on Thanksgiving—November 26 this year—that means airfares will be at their lowest between September 30 and November 5 (adjust those dates accordingly to your actual Thanksgiving departure plans).

The prices during this period, of course, are not fixed. They’ll change by the day based on demand and other metrics.

Source link