Finding the Best Airline Prices

The holidays are here and it's time to consider purchasing plane tickets to see your family, right? Well, on average people typically purchase their airline tickets for Thanksgiving in August, causing what is left to skyrocket in price. Don't be discouraged, we have some very useful tips on saving hundreds of dollars per ticket!

In a search for tickets from Los Angeles to Minneapolis on Delta Airlines, we entered in our desired information:

We set the time to leave at 8:00 pm the evening before Thanksgiving, assuming a lot of people would like to wait until they are off work, and their children are out of school.

Then we set the return date for the following Sunday afternoon, getting us back home in time to be able to go to work on Monday.

Average cost of a ticket through Travelocity with this criteria: $908/per person, round-trip.

Average cost of a ticket through Delta Airlines with this criteria: $816/per person, round-trip.

For family of four, that is $3,264.00 - $3,632.00 in airline tickets alone for the Thanksgiving holiday!

So how can you save hundreds of dollars per ticket?

Consider changing some of the variables:

Changing the date and time is the biggest difference you will make in the cost of your airline ticket. We changed our flight information to leaving on the early morning of November 20th instead of the evening of November 21st. Then we changed our returning flight Monday morning instead of Sunday afternoon.

These are the results:
Average price of a ticket through Travelocity with this new criteria: $458.00/per person, round-trip.

Average price of a ticket through Delta Airlines with this new criteria: $734.00/per person, round-trip.

As you can see, it also pays to research around through several different websites to find the best value!

Be a little more flexible on dates, and consider the cost-benefit of allowing your child to miss an extra day or two of school. Also, consider a returning flight on Monday, as Sunday is typically the preferred time to travel back.

Search for discounted ticketing for your children:

Children 2+ in age are subject to being charged full-price ticket. Some websites, though, offer discounted tickets for children AND senior citizens 65+. Orbitz and Expedia are your best bets, however Travelocity doesn't appear to offer the discounted tickets.

Check out these new websites to help you save!

Farecast.com: This website is known to be very accurate on predicting fluctuations in flight pricing. We love that it also compares flight prices from several online sites.

YAPTA.com (Your Awesome Personal Travel Assistant): Enter in your confirmation number and Yapta will email you if prices go down and you then become eligible to receive credit vouchers of the difference towards another airline ticket!

From the Yapta website: Guaranteed Airfare Rules entitle you to rebook if a lower fare is available - you get the difference as a credit for future travel. Simply add your your ticket information. Yapta will email you if the price drops below what you paid, making you eligible for a voucher or refund from the airline.