Find the Cheapest Holiday Airfare

Oct. 30, 2009— -- It's never too early to be thinking of flying home for the holidays.

Thanks to the recession, airfares are at record lows. Both business and leisure travelers are staying home, leaving desperate airlines to cut fares in an effort to fill seats.

Except during the holidays, particularly Christmas.

Americans are still heading home for Thanksgiving and Christmas, and those same cash strapped airlines are squeezing them for every possible dollar.

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The holiday rate hikes have caused sticker shock for consumers expecting cheap fares, and the price hikes have stretched across the country.

From March through June, the average airfare for a domestic flight, including both round-trip and one-way fares for which no return flight was purchased, was $301, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation's Bureau of Transportation Statistics. That's down a whopping 13 percent from the same time last year, the largest decline ever recorded by the government, putting airfare prices back to where they were in 1998.

To counter those price drops, the airlines have grounded planes, reducing the number of available seats between destinations. So there are now less seats available to fly to visit family for Thanksgiving and Christmas, and the airlines charge an even-higher premium for those remaining seats.

"It is the perfect storm," said Brian Clark, the general manager of airfare search site Fly.com. "When demand surges on a low, fixed number of available seats, fares jump.

In fact the airlines recently added into their ticket prices an across-the-board $10 surcharge, each way, for travel during 13 days across the Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's holidays. That's on top of already-inflated ticket prices.

"You have to act like a Boy Scout when it comes to holiday travel -- be prepared for the worst and have a wry smile ready when you see the airport in your rear view mirror," said Rick Seaney, CEO of flight search site FareCompare.com and an ABC News weekly columnist.