Victoria The best fares for Christmas and winter trips don’t wait for a sale or a deadline. They’re already showing up, on ordinary days, with no announcement.
By Victoria Hayes, who worked as a travel agent for 11 years.
Do you think holiday fares only go up from here?
On 4 September, a December round trip from Washington to Lisbon was flagged at $521. That route usually runs $1,066.
Nobody announced it. It just appeared, and a flight-deal app I now follow caught it.
The app is called RatePunk. It checks fares from US airports around the clock and gives each one a score from 0 to 100, based on how it compares to what that route normally costs. A score of 80 or more means a fare well below the usual price.
And that Lisbon fare wasn’t a fluke. Last December, about 1 in 24 of the fares RatePunk checked sat on routes scoring 80+. In August, it was about 1 in 200.
The Christmas fares are already showing up, too. In just the three days to 1 October, it flagged 3,415 fares scoring 80+ for Christmas and New Year travel (18 December to 3 January) from 36 of the biggest US airports. 622 of them scored 90+.
Every October, my clients asked me the same question
For 11 years I booked flights for other people. And every October, the same question came in: “When should I book the holidays?”
I gave the answers everyone gave. Book early. Wait for a sale. Keep an eye on the prices.
The truth? It was a guess. A good fare would show up, and by the time my client read my email, it had already moved.
Why most people miss the good holiday fares
Here’s what I couldn’t see from my desk.
Airlines reprice fares all the time, as AltexSoft explains, and the unusual ones don’t stay put. As Going puts it, they tend to vanish within hours.
So the best holiday fare doesn’t arrive with a sale, a countdown or an email. It appears on an ordinary weekday, sits there for a few hours, and moves.
If you check once a week, or wait for one big sale day, you’re looking on the wrong day almost every time.
Marcy was ready to give up
Marcy Dunn is 52, an office manager in Washington, D.C. This year she promised her sister a Christmas in Lisbon.
She assumed December fares would only climb. Her plan was to grab whatever was left in November and hope it wasn’t too painful.
She’d done it that way for years: a few searches, a sinking feeling, then booking whatever was on the screen because waiting felt worse.
She thought the good fares were for people with time to watch prices all day.
They’re not. They’re for people who get told.
You don’t need to find the right week. You need the right fare to find you
That’s what RatePunk does.
It scans 150M fares a day across 100+ providers and watches your home airport around the clock. Only fares rated 80+ ever reach you.
You can also set an alert for exact dates, like Christmas week, so the holiday fare finds you instead of the other way round.
When one lands, a push notification shows up on your phone with four things:
• Route – a flight from your airport
• Dates – the days the low fare is live
• Price – the fare, and what you’re saving
• Link – straight to the booking page
What Marcy caught
Marcy set her home airport and an alert for her December dates.
On 4 September, her phone pinged: Washington to Lisbon, $521 round trip, on a route that usually runs $1,066. Rated 95/100.
She booked it that evening, with the airline, and sent her sister a screenshot.
She’d been ready to pay whatever November charged. The fare turned up in September.
What RatePunk has flagged for holiday and winter dates
All caught between 30 July and 7 September 2026:
→ Houston to Lisbon: $282 round trip, typically $742 (rated 95/100), for November–December travel
→ San Francisco to Frankfurt: $320 round trip, typically $686 (rated 94/100), for November–December travel
→ Seattle to Stockholm: $354 round trip, typically $865 (rated 94/100), for November travel
→ Sacramento to Turks and Caicos: $476 round trip, typically $972 (rated 92/100), for January travel
→ Chicago to London: a $693 route flagged at $50, a real, bookable error fare (rated 95/100), for January travel
The biggest drop above is 93%. That is where “up to 90%” comes from, not from a promise.
Over 300,000 members already use RatePunk. It’s rated 4.7 on the App Store and 4.6 on Google Play.
I didn’t trust it at first either
I spent 11 years watching “deal” sites that were really just booking sites with a different logo. RatePunk isn’t one of them. You book with the airline or booking site yourself, the way Marcy did.
This October, I’d answer the question differently
When someone asks me when to book the holidays now, I don’t guess. The good fares are already out there, on ordinary days. The trick is being told when one appears.
Fares rated 80+ usually stay open minutes to hours before they reprice. That’s not a deadline. It’s just how fares move.
You don’t have to guess the right week anymore. You just have to be told.
| IMPORTANT NOTE: RatePunk has had a wave of new sign-ups since this article went live. Readers of this page can still join with 77% off. |
Sources: Going • AltexSoft • Deal figures: RatePunk app screenshots, 30 July, 2, 4 and 7 September 2026 • Fare data: RatePunk scanner, August and December 2025 and 29 September-1 October 2026.
