If you’re planning on flying somewhere this Thanksgiving and have procrastinated on booking your flights, you’re probably wondering how soon should I buy my ticket and how badly am I going to get hosed? There’s good and bad news out there. The good since airfares have been falling sharply this fall you can probably wait a bit longer than you could most years, prices for Thanksgiving overall are 5-10% cheaper than last year and have been holding steady the last few weeks. BUT, it’s still expensive with on average tickets running three times what they are on average the rest of this fall, for some reason tickets in and out of the West Coast are selling at less of a markup than the rest of the country.
So when to buy? The people over at Hopper say anytime before ten days out from Thanksgiving. Fares should rise less than 5% between now and then, before jumping sharply. As usual the cheapest dates to fly are Thanksgiving itself, the day after and the Monday at the start of Thanksgiving week