Farecast predicts the future of cheap holiday flights

There's a 95 percent chance Senior Editor Christine Sarkis is thinking about travel right now. Follow her on Instagram @postcartography and Twitter @ChristineSarkis.

Christine Sarkis is an SATW-award-winning journalist and executive editor at SmarterTravel. Her stories have also appeared on USA Today, Conde Nast Traveler, Huffington Post, and Business Insider. Her advice has been featured in dozens of print and online publications including The New York Times, Conde Nast Traveler, and People magazine. She has also shared travel tips on television and radio shows including Good Morning America, Marketplace, and Here & Now. Her work has been published in the anthologies Spain from a Backpack and The Best Women's Travel Writing 2008. She is currently working on a travel memoir.

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Holiday airfare booking is enough to make even the most confident bargain-finder nervous. After all, the advice stays the same, but the cheapest days to fly change every year, depending on holiday dates. How do you keep up? Here are a few ways.

In its blog, the airfare prediction website Farecast posts advice for finding less expensive Thanksgiving and Christmas airfare. Advice includes: act fast when you see a good price; expect to pay more for flights at Thanksgiving; try to avoid traveling the Friday and Saturday before Christmas; and for travel around the December holidays, look for flights between October 1 and 15, when prices can drop. And, as ever, to save the most, be flexible with your dates. Phew! Got all that?

SmarterTravel.com airfare editor Jessica Labrencis recently wrote an article on How to save on Thanksgiving and Christmas airfare, which offers similar advice to Farecast’s. The difference is that Farecast gives historical data to illustrate the trend, whereas Labrencis’ article offers a succinct overview of saving tips.

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