Agents might want to advise their clients to buy their airline tickets now if they want to travel next Thanksgiving, says Tom Parsons, CEO of Bestfares.com. He told TravelMole:
“Southwest extended their sale from October 29th to December 11. So now you have 60 US airports you can fly in for as low as $58 roundtrip, or up to $198, with very little blackout times.”
He predicted the other low-cost carriers would also extend their sales.
Mr Parsons said it’s commonly assumed that JetBlue started the current low-cost fare wars with their slashing prices on one million seats.
“They got a lot of attention, and one million is a lot of seats,” he said. But it was Southwest which started the low-cost flurry, he added.
Mr Parsons said when travelers combine all the low-cost routes across America, they have the opportunity to fly to more than 80% of the country at up to 65% of the standard major airline prices.
The larger carriers have responded to the fare wars by also dropping prices, he added.
Report by David Wilkening
