business

Grandma keeps asking when you'll arrive for Thanksgiving.

The in-laws are already preparing the basement bedroom for your Christmas visit. And your buddies are gearing up for New Year's Eve debauchery in Las Vegas.

But you haven't booked your airline tickets yet.

Normally that would be a bad thing: Airfares often rocket the closer it gets to the busy winter holidays.

Your procrastinating ways, however, might pay off this year.

Airfares for travel near Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's have dipped on many routes in the past few weeks. In some cases, travelers can save hundreds of dollars from what they would have paid a month or two ago for the same tickets.

"I think you were very smart this time if you waited," said Tom Parsons, who runs travel site BestFares.com. "It's clear that, compared to five or six weeks ago, we've seen a major drop in holiday fares."

Average fares for the holidays are still up from a year ago -- and that doesn't even count the new charges airlines have instituted over the past year for checking bags and changing flights, among other things. And some fares, particularly for travel on peak days and to warm-weather leisure destinations such as Hawaii and the Caribbean, remain high.

But there are plenty of good holiday deals out there, and in some cases fares are even less than you might pay at other, slower times of the year.

Chalk it up to an unstable economy, a sharp decline in the price of oil and a resulting drop-off in demand.

"This is very rare," said Bob Harrell of airline consulting firm Harrell Associates in New York City. "Fares normally don't go down the closer you get to the holidays."

As oil prices soared to record levels this year, airlines raised fares, implemented fuel surcharges, raised fees for a host of services and tacked on new charges for things such as checking bags.

They have been slow to lower fares and fuel surcharges as fuel prices drop, saying they were late to enact them in the first place. Airlines also were hoping to keep prices high by eliminating flights -- and therefore reducing the supply of seats -- this fall and winter.

But consumers looking to rein in their spending habits are swinging the cost-cutting ax at travel.

And that's forcing airlines to lower prices, as demand is falling more than expected. Consumers also are starting to push back now that fuel prices have declined so dramatically.

"Airlines were going for the jugular by cutting back flights, and when fuel started going down they were dancing in the streets," Parsons said. "But they didn't see this economic crisis coming. So some people are rethinking travel plans, and airlines aren't able to charge these outrageous prices anymore."