We’re entering that sleepy period at the end of the summer, but if you still haven’t booked your dream trip, there’s good news: Flying is about to get much cheaper.
Airfares tend to drop every year late in the summer, and they usually stay low through the fall until people start to book their holiday trips, travel analysts say. For example, the average cost for a domestic round-trip flight dropped to $232 in July from about $250 in June, according to the airfare tracker app Hopper. Average fares fell more in August and are projected to keep sliding to $213 in October before ticking back up for the holidays.
“If you’re not tied into the school schedule and you find a getaway for September, it could be much cheaper than what you would find in July or August,” said Patrick Surry, chief data scientist for Hopper.
Demand for flights tends to fall off in the late summer as families hunker down to prepare for the start of the school year, Surry said. Travel tends to stay slow until the holidays, so airlines often discount flights during that period to help fill any empty seats. “You can often find some great deals,” Surry said.
Before you dive into your flight search, it’s worth noting that your chances of finding a steal for your holiday trip are slim. Airlines still hike prices for those popular travel dates, Surry said.
Plus, it may pay to put off booking those trips. Last year, the best fares for holiday travel were typically found six weeks to a month before the holiday, said Randi Wolfson, spokeswoman for Skyscanner, a travel search-engine website.
For instance, the greatest potential for savings on Thanksgiving flights was during the week of Halloween, according to Skyscanner. Flights booked then for Thanksgiving were 7.7 percent cheaper than the average flight cost throughout the rest of the year.
Christmas flights were most affordable in the week of Thanksgiving.
Of course, there’s no promise that the patterns seen last year will play out in exactly the same way this year, Wolfson said. So the smart thing to do may be to start researching those flights now, both Surry and Wolfson said.
Set up alerts so that you can get an email or text if prices drop, they said.
