Holiday flights, baggage fees may cost travelers more

10 47. Now the big holiday travel rush kicks off in just a few short weeks. And if you are looking for a last minute flight, you might want to brace yourself. Yeah, you won't just be spending more on a flight. You're going to be spending more on your baggage. Now joining us now is Katie Nastro, aviation and travel correspondent at Flighty. Good morning, Katie. Yeah, good morning to you both, even amid this sticker shock news that we're about to chat about. I know. So Thanksgiving travel is the next big travel day that we have coming up. What are prices looking like for people looking to take a flight somewhere? Gosh, anyone that hasn't booked their Thanksgiving and even winter holiday trips at this point are looking at flight costs between 20 and 30 percent, more so 30 percent for domestic travel, specifically over the winter holidays. That is really striking and can definitely add up, especially for families traveling with multiple people. And then these baggage fees, you have noticed that some of the airlines are increasing these and some significantly. Yeah, unfortunately for the traveling public that likes to fly on JetBlue, we just learned that they have upped their bag fees for their first check bag to $50, which is pretty stark because you remember, you're not just paying $50 for the entire flight, you're paying $50 each way. So that's 100 extra dollars for a check bag, which is definitely ouch to the wallet. And again, especially for families that are the ones that are typically checking more bags because of all the gear. And I'm looking at those prices right now and I know it's only a five dollar difference but I mean ten dollars round trip is a difference. What is the difference between the peak and off-peak prices? Yeah, it's typically, as you nailed on the head, it's roughly around $5, but what a lot of people don't understand is for JetBlue specifically, they have seasonal pricing. And so there are peak days in each month that they've identified, and you can go on their website to see which days apply. But on those specific days, if you are flying, you are going to pay that higher rate. And across not just the first check bag, but as the second check bag as well. And I did a couple of quick calculations. And unfortunately for us, more than 50% of the calendar year falls on these peak days, meaning that you're paying basically higher prices for Pretty much half the year, if you are traveling on these dates. And for a lot of us, we're traveling over the winter holidays, Thanksgiving, as well as the summer. And unfortunately, again, those are the peak days that JetBlue is outlining. That's ridiculous. They're bamboozling us. That's crazy. It's definitely frustrating to say the least. You said it. That's right. I know that you can book flights out many months in advance. So if we look as far out as we possibly can, are those flight prices going up or are they going down? Yeah, it's interesting when you get into January and February, typically that is considered a low season or the off season when it comes to travel. And so we are still seeing some deals out there. But in general, when we think about the cheapest prices or the cheapest fares that we're used to, the floor has definitely risen. And we can also attribute that to not just higher jet fuel costs impacting base fares for airlines. But also, you have a spiritless market, and even if you didn't fly on Spirit, they really help to put pressure on those larger carriers to keep prices down. And so we are not just grappling with higher fuel costs impacting fares, but also less competition. I mean, I believe I saw recently that Delta did say that they don't- People are still buying their tickets at the prices that there are, so we should not really expect to see them come back down to what we were used to even just a year ago. But when it comes to booking a flight, I've seen a lot of TikTokers, a lot of influencers say, if you book your flight on a Tuesday before 6 a.m., six weeks before you fly, you're going to get the cheapest rate there is. Is there any special formula or special time that you should be looking for your flights to get a cheaper rate? Yeah, I want people to take all of that advice and throw it out the window. Oh, no. There is, yeah. I was waking up early. Oh, really? Ah! There is, unfortunately, no specific amount of days ahead of when you're looking to fly that you can book in confidence to know that you're going to get it exactly right every time. But there are sort of windows of time that you can try to target. And if you can't remember anything, if you are traveling in a peak period like the summer or the winter holidays, you want to try to get your flights booked in the opposite season to give yourself not just the best chance at scoring a great deal, but also you give yourself enough window or really runway, so to speak, so that if the price does drop, which it most likely will, you can take advantage of it. Actually, if you book a main economy ticket, if you see that the price has dropped, whether it's through an email alert service or just through Google Flights, which sends you a quick alert, you can call the airline and get rebooked at that lower fare. So you're always saving and you're getting credit to then use in the future. You just got to make sure that you're not booking a basic economy ticket, which is the most restrictive. We're out of luck this year, but next year when we book our holiday travel, when should we start looking at that? I want people in December to start thinking ahead into where am I going to go for the summer vacation and start looking and even start booking when we come into the new year to, again, give themselves that ample opportunity to score a great deal. And then when you're sitting by the pool or maybe you're sitting by the beach, you want to start thinking about winter holidays. It's not too early. You don't want to book too early. You don't want to book too late, right in that gooey middle. And that means roughly six months out. Katie, good advice. Thank you. Thanks so much.