Cheap airplane tickets and cheap vacation packages are becoming increasingly difficult to find over the Thanksgiving holiday. If you plan to fly around Thanksgiving, expect to deal with large crowds and see very few airfare deals.
Airlines have eliminated tens of thousands of seats because of mergers, capacity reductions, and increased use of small planes. Fewer seats usually results in higher prices.
Traveling over Thanksgiving tends to more challenging than Christmas because so many travelers want to fly over a limited number of days four days vs. two weeks for people who fly around Christmas and/or New Years.
The following are suggestions regarding Thanksgiving travel:
Buy you tickets now. Last minute sales are unlikely over Thanksgiving and open seats are going quickly. Since you can usually reserve your seat when you buy your ticket, you are more likely to get a more desirable seat the earlier you buy.
Consider flying into or returning from alternate airports. Sometimes you can save money by using an airport that is less convenient than your closest option. Less heavily trafficked airports sometimes offer better deals.
By being flexible as to your travel days you can often save. Tickets tend to be cheaper (sometimes saving hundreds of dollars) if one of your travel days is on Thanksgiving and cheaper still if your return day is not on the Sunday after Thanksgiving.
Fly nonstop whenever possible even though connections are often cheaper since if you miss a connection you may have a hard time finding an empty seat on a later flight.
Consider paying more to buy a coach seat with extra legroom. Such seats often come with access to expedited security lanes and early boarding. www.cheapfares.com