Never attempted travel at Thankgiving, but for about 15 years running we would fly home on Christmas day after visiting family in Portland Oregon. We would leave in the evening, after a full day of festivities. The airport was like a ghost town. It was awesome.
Flying for Thanksgiving
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Re: Flying for Thanksgiving
#32Anyone else struck by the promptness of the Dept. of Technology here? Always nice to see things just like this working.
Re: Flying for Thanksgiving
#33I discovered this about three years back as well. India has quite a few holidays when you are required to travel to your home with two major festivals - Diwali(Oct/Nov) and Holi (March). Since, it is important for people to be at home for these festivals, they would book early, or take costly flights, or alternate flights. With my parents being flexible, and understanding about how I love them even when I am a day late to be at home, I ended up booking the flight on the festival day, rather than before.
Cue and Behold. An empty airplane, with a total of 30-40 people in an Airbus 320. I got upgraded to business class for free. There were no lines for boarding. The plane took off on time, landed on time, and all of us could sleep in peace (or do whatever it is people do on planes).
From that time, if I am going home for a festival, it will be the day of the festival.
Re: Flying for Thanksgiving
#34I like to fly international on the afternoon of Christmas day - I get to have breakfast with my family then arrive in another continent to look forward to a stress-free New Years.
Re: Flying for Thanksgiving
#35I feel like Google flights would have given you the same data by showing that flying on the day of Thanksgiving is way cheaper. Just a guess, though.
Cheaper doesn't always tell you "least busy", especially when planning ahead. I'll have the misery of flying the day before Christmas this year and the flight itself was peanuts but I'm not looking forward to the airport situation.
Re: Flying for Thanksgiving
#36This reminds me: I procrastinated and haven't booked my Christmas ticket yet... Bay Area to Atlanta — anyone got any tips? I think Google Flights is the best way to find the cheapest ticket, but if there's something else out there I'd be glad to know!
I set Hopper for a date I'm interested in and let it tell me the best time to buy. https://www.hopper.com
Re: Flying for Thanksgiving
#37Never attempted travel at Thankgiving, but for about 15 years running we would fly home on Christmas day after visiting family in Portland Oregon. We would leave in the evening, after a full day of festivities. The airport was like a ghost town. It was awesome.
Pdx is like a ghost town most days depending on the time. I think it’s what makes the airport so nice.
Re: Flying for Thanksgiving
#38I sort of discovered this myself when looking for flight prices about 4 months back around this week (flying from the US). I happen to have the whole week of Thanksgiving off from work due to it shutting down that week every year (supposedly not guaranteed but has been given every year since instituted), so I was looking to take advantage of it to travel - I settled on the UK, but picking good days/times to fly was a challenge. I knew that generally early morning/late night flights were cheaper if I could get them in general, but one thing I noticed was flights were expensive the Saturday before to fly out, and expensive the Saturday and Sunday after Thanksgiving to fly back.
I settled on flying out the Friday before Thanksgiving, and flying back on Black Friday for a savings of about $200-300. My flight to the UK though was completely full, in part owing that SFO is a major United hub whose employees take advantage of flying standby whenever they can. I’ll be a little surprised if it is full going back though.
Re: Flying for Thanksgiving
#39I had the joy this year of flying across Europe on New Years Eve. NYE fireworks across Germany (I think it was Germany) were truly spectacular from the air.
Re: Flying for Thanksgiving
#40so many numbers !!!!!