<p>I don’t say this to be obnoxious but - I’m kind of surprised that people didn’t know that TG is such a high demand time of year and of course flights will be more expensive. People travel for Christmas, but it’s not concentrated on 2 days the way TG travel is concentrated on Wed and Sun.</p>
<p>Amtrak isn’t any better, if there are people whose kids will take the train. Last year,
S2’s senior year in college, I made TG reservations in March so I could get the best fares for Wed and Sun. I knew to make them that early because the year before when I made the reservation in May only the very first train Sun morning was at a reasonable price.</p>
<p>Of course, this year with no more academic calendar to follow, I forgot about his coming home for TG. He now lives and works in the same city where he went to college. It finally dawned on me in early May that we hadn’t arranged his trip for TG. I could still get him a reasonably priced ticket for Wed, but for Sun the ticket is almost double the usual price.</p>
<p>DS has classes through Weds unless profs elect to cancel and that’s too late for us to make reservations. Last year we went to him since we are more flexible. This year he has said he will stay at school and hang out with friends since time is short and work level high. He has a week-long break in Oct and can come home then at reasonable cost - if he wants to!</p>
<p>Working college grad son just booked his flight to visit us in our new Florida home. </p>
<p>A caution to booking flights for Thanksgiving. Be sure to not assume your child can skip a day or class- some professors may schedule an exam the day before. Wanting to go home is no excuse for missing class- there are few enough days as it is. And- better to have an exam out of the way instead of the week of return.</p>
<p>^^ So true. S1 had Tuesday classes canceled for three years and so I booked an AZ - CT flight in mid-summer for Tues-Sun of Thanksgiving weekend. As it turned out, S had a major engineering design project presentation at 9am on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving; no chance of rescheduling as it was a team presentation. We ended up having to change his flight at the last minute at a cost of $900.</p>
<p>Ouch!!
We could never bring S-2 home cross-country for TG, but if I had to, I think I’d look for a Thursday morning air ticket, and delay the holiday meal until Thursday night or Friday! Of course, then I’d be sweating whether or not there was ground transpo on a Thursday TG morning.</p>
<p>p3t, in my experience it’s the Sunday return flight that’s the budget buster. </p>
<p>Where is that Star Trek transporter technology when you need it? ;)</p>
<p>"If you don’t mind missing a few classes leave Thursday before break and come back Monday in the afternoon/evening. That’s what I’m doing and it saved me $150 " - I do NOT recommend that for others unless it has been cleared by the professors. Really, some of them are NOT very understanding… even telling students that a pre-purchased airline ticket is not an excuse to miss class.</p>
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<p>I had a similar experience which is why I’ve been flying Southwest whenever possible since then. No change fees, and if after you book your flight you see it (or another one) for cheaper, you can rebook for free and get Southwest credit that’s valid a year from when your purchased the original ticket. Just by rebooking my original flight within a few days of travel I’ve managed to save over $250 in the last year alone.</p>
<p>I don’t know if it was luck or what, but D1 managed to take whole week off every Thanksgiving for 4 years. Here professors were all very understanding. We are hoping D2 could do that because we usually go away some where warm that week. I am happy D2 is close enough she could take a bus home.</p>
<p>Last year, I waited until D had had all her classes to see if the profs could say anything about whether or not they would hold class on Wednesday. They all said definitely – class and possibly tests on Wed before Thanksgiving. So I booked her a flight leaving at 5 pm. As the holiday got closer, guess what? Every class was canceled. She could have left Tuesday. Do the profs not know what they’re going to do or do they cave to pressure?At that point, I couldn’t change it.</p>
<p>I suspect public U’s are more likely to have Wednesday events since most of the student population most likely is from places to close to consider flying. An exception may be in deer hunting regions… Some (mainly private?) schools will have a midsemester break so students will have already had a chance to go home. Also- for those from far away the semester often ends soon after Thanksgiving and the hassles of spending nearly two days for travel (coming and going) may not be worth it, especially after freshman year.</p>
<p>S flights will be on Southwest; they have I think 6 flights a day between Chicago and our city (and no more than that around the holidays). I went on Southwest’s site 7 AM the morning they opened T’day flights and by then (I’m assuming booking started at midnight), the most expensive flight–1 PM Wed–was sold out! I hovered over the late afternoon flight but in the end didn’t want to take a chance and instead booked the evening flight. It’s the last flight of the day which makes me nervous but I’d be even more nervous if somehow he gets an Wed afternoon class that he can’t miss and a flight that he can’t change. He won’t even have his schedule until he gets to school in Sep. The beauty of Southwest is that you can change for free, but if there’s nothing available to change it to…</p>
<p>Mutti – I passed on the last flight out from Chicago on Wednesday for my daughter because I didn’t want to have to worry about her spending the night at Midway if there was a problem. Without knowing her schedule, I figured if she could not make the flight out around 5pm, she could always switch to a Thanksgiving morning departure rather than the other way around.</p>
<p>So, I saw this thread last night and just so happened to mention to my D that if she doesnt want to do the 8 hour drive, by herself, for a 5 day weekend, we should look at fares…</p>
<p>No idea why, but the exact flights she needed/wanted from Tues-Sunday were less $$ than I paid for the RT all of last year…booked it immediately (United plays around if you search too many times on their app)</p>
<p>GeminiMom, I just couldn’t decide and felt like there was clock ticking so I just pulled the trigger on the later flight. It’s cheap and easy for him to return to his dorm if need be (gulp). We had to put him on the early and far cheapest flight back on Sunday morning; I sure hope he gets home Wednesday. There’s a small chance that when he gets his schedule in September it will allow him to switch to an earlier flight on Wed or even Tues! If seats are still available, of course.</p>
<p>Rodney, don’t get me started on cookies; creepy and annoying. I’m sure I’m not the only only getting all sorts of ads on this very website tied to my search history. Ugh…</p>
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<p>I propose that rodney act as travel agent for all of CC! :)</p>
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<p>A great trick I’ve found is to have a couple of different browsers to choose from when running all these searches on airlines/hotels. My general default is Firefox, but when I’m doing price comparisons I’ll fire up Google Chrome for its ability to launch multiple separate Incognito windows. Just open the browser up, then hit ctrl+shift+N and there will be no cookies tracking your history, and each new window is treated like a completely different user connecting.</p>
<p>I never go to the airline sites to look only to book. I use Kayak and you can put in the various versions, times etc you want and see who all is flying. Afterwards then I go to the actual airline to confirm price and times and to book.</p>
<p>kayak doesn’t include Southwest, if that’s an airline that works for you.</p>