You're listening to life kit from NPR.
Hey, everybody, it's Marielle.
We are coming up on the Super bowl of travel in the US, the moment when millions of people drag themselves to the airport so they can eat soggy airport sandwiches and pack like sardines into metal tubes that shuttle them through the sky to their destination, all in the name of seeing friends and family.
Scott Keyes says he understands why people travel at Thanksgiving in the December holidays.
But from a travel perspective, it's one of the worst times to travel, from disruptions to crowds to the price of the flights.
My secret best advice for travel over the holidays is, if at all possible, just don't do it.
Scott, by the way, is the founder and chief flight expert@going.com.
formerly known as Scott's cheap flights.
He says if you can wait and travel in January, you will probably have a much better travel experience.
My favorite date of the entire year is around January 8.
I circle that date on the calendar because whereas flight prices really get inflated over the Christmas new Year period, around January 8, they just fall off a cliff from the most expensive time of the entire year to the absolute cheapest.
And we're not talking, you know, 20 or 30% drop in fares.
It drops 75, 80%.
But this episode of Life Kit is for the rest of you poor souls who will be traveling during the holidays because lots of crowds plus winter weather can lead to delays and cancellations and just chaos.
So Scott is going to give us his very best tips on how you can try to avoid flight hiccups and what to do when they happen.
Is there anything you can do when booking your flight to help prevent cancellations or make it less likely that your flight will be canceled?
While there's always going to be a certain amount of randomness to flight disruptions, when you dig into the data, you actually find that there are two types of flights that have the highest odds of getting you to where you're going on time, or at least without a major delay.
And those two types of flights are early morning flights and nonstop flights.
Let's start with the early morning flights.
It turns out that those first flights of the day have an on time arrival.