Holiday travel deals still exist, but you’ll pay other ways

WASHINGTON — If you’re planning to hop on a plane for the holidays and you
haven’t booked a flight yet, you still might be able to find deals — but you’ll
pay
in other ways.

“There are definitely deals. Especially if you’re willing to use
different airports. For example, Dulles International Airport, Frontier Airlines
now flies to several cities from there but they haven’t been able to raise
prices. I think a lot of people don’t even know they fly out of Dulles,” says
George Hobica, spokesman for AirfareWatchdog.

Hobica says there are other options for finding holiday flight deals, “People
should use Southwest.com, you won’t find their fares on any other site like
Kayak.com for example,” he says. “Google Flight Explore is a great way to use
flexible date searches.”

Frontier Airlines often has promo code sales up to 20 percent off.

“Spirit Air, I know a lot of people don’t like them because of the fees, but even
with the fees they are sometimes much, much cheaper than other airlines,” says
Hobica.

He believes fares are as high as they’re going to go.

There are always last minute deals, but you may pay a price in other ways, “The
problem is you’re going to get the worst seat on the plane. It’s going to be the
middle seat by the lavatory and it’s going to be on the 5 a.m. flight.”

And if you are just looking to get away and don’t have a specific destination in
mind, “What we sometimes see is that if you’re willing to go someplace less
popular
for the holidays, like Las Vegas, you’ll still be able to find a deal,” Hobica
says.

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