This is the best time to book your Thanksgiving and Christmas flights

When it comes to booking a budget-friendly flight, there’s lots of conflicting advice out there—even the best day to buy a plane ticket seems to change fairly often. You don’t want to book too early or too late, but it’s hard to hit the bull’s-eye on the perfect happy medium that’ll get you the best price.

The holiday season can be particularly stressful because it seems like everyone is traveling and trying to get somewhere. Fortunately, the experts over at Expedia crunched some numbers to find the best day to click “buy,” for your flights for Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Thanksgiving falls on Thursday, November 28, in 2019. Using data from 2018, the website predicts the cheapest days to book for Thanksgiving will be between October 29 and November 13. “Booking two weeks to a month in advance of travel saved travelers more than five percent [last year],” Expedia advises. As for the dates you choose to fly, flying on the 28th itself will give you the cheapest rates—an average of $100 less than tickets for the Sunday before. If actually flying on Thanksgiving isn’t an option, look to the Monday and Tuesday before for the next-cheapest rates. Avoid the Wednesday, the season’s busiest travel day! Avoiding hectic days like this is one of the holiday travel tips that will save your sanity.

If you’re planning on taking a Christmas trip instead, book at least two weeks ahead to save around 15 percent. The window they recommend the most is between November 23 and December 9—early, but not too early. (They claim that booking more than three months beforehand will cause you to spend 15% more.) And when to fly? Christmas Eve tends to have the best rates, with Christmas itself (a Wednesday) or the 23 also being strong contenders. They recommend avoiding the Saturday before Christmas, December 21. And if you love the idea of taking a trip around the holidays, consider these cheap trips to squeeze in before the holiday season!

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