It's That Time of Year: Check Our Holiday Calendar for the Best Days to Fly

Flying over the holidays can be a pain. Airlines know we "need" to travel for Thanksgiving and Christmas, so fares go way up. And this year looks to be the most difficult for holiday travelers in a while. Delta, Northwest and US Airways are all cutting flights this winter, creating more competition for fewer seats. And fares are up in general, driven by record-high fuel prices. There are ways to get the lowest possible fares, though, and ways to make the best of a miserable peak-day flight.

Over at super-discounter Priceline, they have banks of computers that do nothing but crunch air fares. So we asked them when flights are cheapest over the next few months. Priceline spokesman Brian Ek got back to us with some tips on the cheapest flights over the holiday period:

• For Thanksgiving, try departing Saturday Nov. 19, Monday the 21st or Tuesday the 22nd and returning Friday Nov. 25, or departing Monday Nov. 21 and returning Saturday or Sunday, Nov. 26 or 27.
• For Christmas, try traveling from Monday Dec. 19th to Tuesday or Wednesday the 27th or 28th, from Tuesday the 20th to Wednesday the 28th, or from Wednesday the 21st to Tuesday the 27th or Thursday the 29th.
• If you can, fly between 5-7 a.m. That way, you'll get the best fares and the least chance of getting bumped from your flight. Flights after 8 p.m. can also be cheap, but you risk getting stuck overnight if there are a lot of delays. Flights between 11 a.m. and 4 p.m. are a bit more expensive, and flights between 8-10 a.m. and 5-7 p.m. are much more expensive.
• Look at all the airports near your destination. Think of flying into Newark instead of LaGuardia, or Fort Lauderdale instead of West Palm Beach. Airports that have plenty of low-fare airlines flying into them typically have the most competitive fares.
• Buy now. It's unlikely that airfares will get any lower. Waiting for such could work against you.

On this calendar we built from Priceline's data, green days are the best days to fly. Orange days are middling, and red days will have the absolute worst fares. (But don't despair; there are still ways to make a buck off a red day.) You can compare our calendar with the similar, but slightly different list of dates provided by Priceline's competitor Hotwire on Hotwire's site. But while Hotwire's calendar focuses on the super-discounted opaque fares available on their site, Priceline used published fares for their analysis.

November

December

January

So You're Stuck - Now What?

Remember this chart applies to domestic flights only. You can still find bargains over Thanksgiving for flying to Europe (where Thanksgiving isn't celebrated), for instance.

But if you're stuck traveling on a high-traffic day, remember the usual mantras: arrive early at the airport and maintain patience, patience, patience. If you have a little flexibility, get bumped, especially if you're flying on Nov. 23, Nov. 27, Dec. 22, Dec. 23 or Jan. 2. By agreeing to arrive a little later than planned, you can reap hundreds of dollars in flight vouchers usable during less-stressful times of the year.

To get yourself bumped, try to bring carry-on bags only (they're less likely to get lost that way) and make sure you're at the gate when the gate agents arrive an hour before your flight. Ask if the flight is full; if it is, find out what their rewards for bumping are. Make sure the vouchers you're getting are unrestricted -- that they're usable as cash on the airline or are usable for a wide range of flights. Some bump vouchers nowadays are almost unusable because they're for a strictly limited set of seats or flights. (If the voucher has blackout dates or capacity controls, stay away.) Make sure they'd be able to get you on a later flight and that you won't be stuck in the airport overnight. That point is especially important this year, when the flights that actually leave airports will almost certainly be fully booked. Then tell them that you'd like to be on the bump list.

If you need to wait until the last minute to make your bookings, consider a last-minute specialty discounter like Site59 or using Priceline or Hotwire's opaque-fare services, which make you give up some control over your flight times in exchange for lower fares. But sometimes over the holidays, it's better to get there late than not to get there at all.

Do you know of other ways to save on holiday fares? Share it with other Frommer's readers on our Air Travel Message Boards today.