Top Six Travel Tactics for Surviving the Holidays

Nov. 4, 2009 — -- When are Thanksgiving and Christmas – like Halloween? When you have to fly. Yes, 'tis the season for potential Holiday Horrors.

But it doesn't have to be that way.

Let's jump right in, shall we, and see how to survive traveling the not always friendly skies during the holiday season – with sanity intact. Follow our Six Holiday Air Travel Tactics, which take little or no preparation, and you'll be good to go.

In this case, "best" doesn't necessarily mean cheapest; it's a little late for that (a good rule of thumb: from now on, every day you wait to buy Thanksgiving airfare adds another $5 to your trip, until mid November – when prices go into the stratosphere).

However, you can still save depending on the day you fly – such as the holiday itself, and certain other days around the holidays (we have a Holiday Travel "Cheapest Days to Fly" Calendar posted on our site showing precisely which days those are).

Okay, now that you know the dates to fly, let's work out the time of day to fly: in a word, early. This decreases your chances of getting caught up in a cascading domino-effect of weather delays or canceled flights (remember, bad weather can affect flights that are thousands of miles away). If being on time is vital, stick to non-stops where possible, even though they can be twice the price of connecting flights, or more. If you must do a connection, stick to "warm weather" cities – Dallas and Atlanta are rarely plagued by towering snowdrifts.

For more air travel news and insights visit Rick's blog at: http://farecompare.com