"Thanksgiving flights: what busy US routes cost now"
Thanksgiving flights on eight busy US routes ran $120 to $760 round trip for November 25 to 29, based on cached traveler fares checked October 27.
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What do Thanksgiving flights cost on busy routes right now?Which travel days around Thanksgiving are usually the priciest?Is it too late to book Thanksgiving 2026 flights?How we checkedThanksgiving flights on eight busy US routes cost between $120 and $760 round trip for the Wednesday, November 25 to Sunday, November 29, 2026 window, based on the cheapest cached fares checked on October 27. Short hops were cheapest. Boston to Miami was the most expensive.
Prices on this page are cached finds, not live quotes. They are round trip, in US dollars, per person, for travelers flying from the cities listed. The price at checkout is the one that counts, and bags and seats cost extra.
What do Thanksgiving flights cost on busy routes right now?
The cheapest cached round trip was $120 on Frontier Airlines from Las Vegas to Los Angeles, nonstop both ways, found October 21. The most expensive of the eight routes was Boston to Miami at $760 on American Airlines, with one stop out and two stops back, found October 23.
Cached traveler fares, checked October 27, 2026
| Route | Cheapest round trip | Airline | Stops out / back | Fare found |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| New York to Los Angeles | $411 | jetBlue | nonstop / 1 stop | October 21 |
| Los Angeles to New York | $588 | Frontier Airlines | 2 stops / 3 stops | October 26 |
| Atlanta to New York | $313 | American Airlines | nonstop / 1 stop | October 23 |
| New York to Atlanta | $198 | Frontier Airlines | nonstop / nonstop | October 27 |
| Boston to Miami | $760 | American Airlines | 1 stop / 2 stops | October 23 |
| Newark to Miami | $736 | United Airlines | 1 stop / nonstop | October 26 |
| Las Vegas to Los Angeles | $120 | Frontier Airlines | nonstop / nonstop | October 21 |
| Denver to Phoenix | $139 | Southwest Airlines | 1 stop / 1 stop | October 27 |
For comparison, Hopper put the average domestic Thanksgiving round trip at about $402, 31% higher than the year before, according to USA Today on October 2, 2026.
New York to Los Angeles, three ways
New York to Los Angeles had the most variety for the same dates, all found October 21:
- $411 on jetBlue, JFK to LAX, nonstop out and one stop back.
- $428 on American, EWR to LAX, one stop each way.
- $510 on jetBlue, JFK to LAX, nonstop both ways.
The nonstop-both-ways fare cost $99 more than the cheapest.
Which travel days around Thanksgiving are usually the priciest?
Thanksgiving Day is Thursday, November 26, 2026, and the days on either side of it draw the most worry. Travelers on Reddit say the Wednesday before and the Sunday after are the worst, and that return flights on November 28 and 29 are hard to find cheap.
Published analyses point the same way for Sunday. The Points Guy, citing Points Path data, says Sunday, November 29 return flights cost roughly 40% more than Black Friday returns.
KAYAK says Thanksgiving Day departures can be up to 19% cheaper than the peak days before the holiday on domestic routes. Our fares all use the classic Wednesday out, Sunday back window, so they show what that window costs, not what a Thursday departure would.
Is it too late to book Thanksgiving 2026 flights?
It is not too late, but the cheapest stretch is ending. Google's holiday travel analysis says the lowest Thanksgiving fares have historically shown up about 34 days before departure, with a low range of 21 to 57 days out, and that October is usually the cheapest month to book. A November 25 departure is 29 days after October 27, which sits inside that range. Details are in Google's holiday travel trends post.
KAYAK describes a similar pattern. Domestic Thanksgiving fares have historically bottomed about five weeks before the holiday, then climbed sharply within two weeks of departure.
Some routes had no cached fares for November 25 to 29 on October 27. That included Chicago to Los Angeles, Los Angeles to Chicago, San Francisco to New York, Dallas to Los Angeles on exact dates, and Seattle to Los Angeles. No price is guessed here. For those, try nearby airports or shift your dates.
Flexible dates showed lower prices in the November fares we found. These use different dates, so they are not like-for-like with the table above:
- Chicago O'Hare to the Los Angeles area, $192 on Frontier, leaving November 14 and returning on Thanksgiving Day, November 26.
- New York JFK to the Los Angeles area, $231 on Alaska, November 10 to 12.
- San Francisco to New York JFK, $253 on Alaska via San Jose, November 11 to 18.
- New York LaGuardia to Orlando, $194 on Southwest, November 11 to 14.
How we checked
Divux searched its cache of fares found by travelers on booking sites on October 27, 2026, for round trips leaving November 25 and returning November 29. Each fare shows the date it was found, and the flights page has the booking links. Timing figures from Google, Hopper, The Points Guy and KAYAK are theirs, not ours.
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