Your Guide to Scoring Holiday Season Flight Deals

 

It's that time of the year. Time to look for holiday flights. Whether you are looking to take a holiday trip or bring a child home for the holidays, you may be searching for a cheap flight or at least a travel deal. 

Twice in the last week, clients have asked me for help finding discounts on holiday flights. So here is your guide to finding those cheap flights or at least cheaper:

1. Start with google.com/flights to see what's available and the going rate. Try various airports, days, times etc. to see if you can move the needle. We are going to search for flights from New York to LAX. Look at the difference just by flying from JFK or Newark. 

Try using the date grid to check out different combinations of days to get a lower price. 

2. Be flexible - You may want to travel on certain days, but if you stay an extra day or leave a day early, you could save a lot of money. For example, over Thanksgiving, if you can stay an extra day and travel on Monday, December 2nd, the price for the flight may drop in half. A hack is using the flexible calendar on google flights. 

3. Check travel portals like Chase or Capital One. - Will the portals offer you a deal if you use points? And if you end up having to buy the flight, at least, you will earn 5x points on the purchase. Be sure to check the flexible dates calendar here too. 

Even if the prices aren't lower, this is one of the times, flexible points come in handy. You get a discount if you use your Chase Ultimate Rewards points because they are worth 1.5:1 with the Chase Sapphire Reserve credit card and 1.25:1 with the Chase Sapphire Preferred credit card. You can see with my Reserve card, I could pick up this $697 flight for 46,438 points. Still painful, but at least there is a discount. 

Worse comes to worse, you buy this flight through the portal and earn 5x points. You can also set an alert through google.com/flights or in the travel portal to let you know if the price drops. It's unlikely, but you never know. 

The bottom line is that the more flexible you can be on your dates and times, the more you can save. And remember, most people plan their travel about six weeks out. In the case of travel deals around the holidays, the early bird gets the worm. 

If you would like some help, please reach out. We love finding travel deals and planning amazing vacations using points and miles.