Google Flights published its 2025 holiday booking analysis in fall 2025, looking back at fare patterns across Thanksgiving and Christmas travel. The 2025 holiday season is now in the rearview mirror, but the patterns the data described are still useful, because award space and cash fares for the 2026 holidays are opening up now. This is a retrospective on what the 2025 numbers actually said, paired with how to apply that pattern as a starting reference point for 2026 holiday planning.

One caveat before any of the numbers: one season of Google Flights data is a pattern, not a law. The booking sweet spots described below are reasonable defaults, not guarantees. Treat them as a planning anchor, not a promise.

What the 2025 Google Flights data actually said

Google Flights analyzed billions of historical searches across the 2025 Thanksgiving and Christmas windows and reported three findings that are worth carrying into 2026 planning:

  • Thanksgiving 2025 fares bottomed out around 35 days before departure. That put the cheapest booking window in mid-to-late October for travel in the week of November 27, 2025.
  • Christmas 2025 fares bottomed out around 51 days before departure. That put the cheapest booking window in early November for travel during the last week of December 2025.
  • Itineraries with at least one layover came in roughly 20-25% cheaper than nonstop equivalents during peak holiday weeks.

Those are the three numbers to remember. Everything else in this guide is downstream of those findings.

A few details worth pinning down:

  • The 35-day and 51-day windows are averages across many origin-destination pairs. Specific routes will move around that mean.
  • Fares between those windows were not flat. They rose slowly from about 90 days out, dipped near the sweet spot, then climbed sharply in the final three weeks before departure.
  • The layover discount widened as departure approached. Two weeks out, nonstop fares spiked harder than connecting itineraries.

How to apply the 2025 pattern to 2026 holiday travel

If the 2026 booking curve looks anything like 2025, here is what the calendar implies for booking decisions you can make right now or in the next few months.

Thanksgiving 2026

Thanksgiving 2026 falls on November 26, 2026. The peak travel window runs roughly November 24 to November 30.

A 35-day-out sweet spot puts the reference booking window around October 18 to October 25, 2026. That is the planning anchor: monitor fares lightly through summer, then start watching seriously in early October.

Christmas 2026

Christmas Day 2026 falls on Friday, December 25, 2026. The high-demand block typically runs December 19 through January 3.

A 51-day-out sweet spot puts the reference booking window around late October to early November 2026. If the 2025 pattern repeats, that window is your strongest cash-fare bet.

What to do between now and then

The pattern advice is about cash fares. Award space behaves differently and rewards earlier action.

  • Award space opens at schedule release, typically 330 to 355 days before departure depending on the airline. For Thanksgiving 2026, that means most award inventory is already loadable now. For Christmas 2026 and the New Year window, December 2026 award space is opening through May and June 2026. If you have flexible points and a target route, search now.
  • Set price alerts on your target Thanksgiving and Christmas routes in Google Flights well before the booking window. Knowing where fares sat three months out is what tells you whether the 35- or 51-day price is actually a deal.
  • Decide cash vs. miles before the sweet spot, not during it. Once a fare drops, decision fatigue is real, and the wrong call costs either money or points. The math is below.

The cash-vs-miles math for holiday domestic travel

Holiday fares are precisely the case where most readers should think twice before burning miles. The reason is straightforward: domestic economy award redemptions on most US legacy carriers run at roughly 1.0 to 1.3 cents per mile in value, while the same cash fare put on a flexible-points card returns 2x to 5x points plus often-meaningful purchase protections.

A worked example:

  • A nonstop Thanksgiving roundtrip from Chicago to Orlando lists at $420 cash, or 35,000 miles plus $11.20 in taxes.
  • Redemption value: $408.80 in value for 35,000 miles equals 1.17 cents per mile.
  • That is at or below the baseline value of most major loyalty currencies. AAdvantage and SkyMiles miles are widely valued in the 1.3 to 1.5 cent range; Chase Ultimate Rewards and Amex Membership Rewards points sit closer to 1.7 to 2.0 cents when transferred to international partners.
  • Pay cash with a Chase Sapphire Preferred and that $420 roundtrip earns 840 Ultimate Rewards points at 2x on travel, plus trip delay and baggage protections that matter more during the holidays than at any other time of year.
  • The Chase Sapphire Reserve earns 3x on travel booked outside the Chase portal and 5x through it, with stronger trip protections.
  • For travelers who do not want category tracking, the Capital One Venture X earns 2x on everything and 5x on flights booked through Capital One Travel.

The rule that comes out of this: pay cash for domestic holiday economy with a card that earns flexible points; save your miles for the redemptions where they earn 2+ cents per point. That generally means international business class, partner awards, or peak-domestic seats where cash fares have spiked above $600.

Two situations flip the math the other way:

  1. Peak-day domestic fares above roughly $500-$600. At those cash prices, even a 1.5 cent per mile redemption beats paying cash for most travelers. A 35,000-mile award on a $600 fare hits 1.7 cents per mile in value.
  2. Award space on transfer partners. If a Chase or Amex transfer partner has economy or premium-cabin space for a holiday week at standard award pricing, the points often work harder than cash. This is where tools like Seats.aero are useful — it pulls award availability across dozens of programs in one search.

The layover discount: when it is actually worth it

The 2025 data showed a 20-25% price gap between nonstop and one-stop itineraries during peak holiday weeks. That gap is real, but the math has to include time and risk.

  • A 20% discount on a $400 fare is $80. If the layover adds three hours to a one-way trip, the implied hourly value of that time is roughly $13 per direction, or $27 round trip across both legs.
  • Holiday weather risk is the larger factor. Connecting in Chicago O'Hare, Denver, or Minneapolis in late November or late December raises misconnect probability meaningfully. A misconnect that costs you Thanksgiving dinner is worth more than $80.
  • Routing through southern hubs (Atlanta, Dallas/Fort Worth, Houston, Charlotte) carries lower weather risk and is the safer place to take the layover discount.

A practical rule: take the layover discount on December 25 travel only if the connecting airport sits below the snow line.

Airline-specific notes for 2026 holiday booking

Two carriers worth flagging on award availability for 2026 holidays:

  • Delta Air Lines. SkyMiles award pricing is fully dynamic, which means holiday awards historically run very expensive (often 60,000+ SkyMiles one-way for domestic peak dates). Delta is rarely the right miles play for holiday economy. It can still be the right cash-plus-Medallion-status play if you fly Delta enough to care about upgrades.
  • American Airlines. AAdvantage retains some saver-level award pricing on domestic holiday routes, particularly through Oneworld partners. American also tends to release additional award space in two waves: at schedule open, and again roughly 14 to 21 days before departure as unsold seats convert. That second wave is one of the few legitimate last-minute award strategies for holiday domestic.

A simple 2026 holiday booking checklist

  • Now through July 2026: Search award space for Thanksgiving 2026. Lock in saver awards if you find them, especially on American or Oneworld partners.
  • May through August 2026: Search award space for Christmas 2026 and the New Year week as schedules open.
  • September 2026: Set Google Flights price alerts on Thanksgiving cash fares for any route you have not already booked on miles.
  • October 18 to October 25, 2026: Pattern-implied Thanksgiving cash-fare sweet spot. Book if fares are at or below your alert baseline.
  • Late October to early November 2026: Pattern-implied Christmas cash-fare sweet spot. Same logic.
  • Two weeks before either holiday: Check American AAdvantage one last time for last-wave saver award space.

The 2025 data gave a clean pattern, but the only way to know if 2026 behaves the same is to track fares yourself starting now. Use the booking windows as anchors, not commands. Compare them against the actual fare history you watch accumulate on your routes between now and October.

This article contains affiliate links. If you apply through our links, we may earn a commission at no cost to you, which helps us continue sharing points and miles strategies with the community.

Some of the links in this article are affiliate links. We may receive a small commission at no extra cost to you if you apply through these links. This helps us keep the site running and continue creating free content.