Booking a spring break trip that doesn’t break the bank can be a serious challenge … and with airfare rising all over the country, it’s a bigger challenge than ever for spring break 2027.
Whether it’s Thanksgiving, holiday break, spring break, or summer, booking trips around the academic calendar can be dauntingly expensive. The reason? Travel demand is sky-high.
If you’re looking at a trip with the family when school is out, you’re not alone: Everyone in your school district – and many families in your entire state and even across the country – are looking to build a trip around those dates, too. Airlines know it … and they charge a premium for those flights as a result. That’s especially true if you wait until the last minute to book.
According to new data from Google Flights, the lowest prices for spring break travel are a full week earlier for 2027 than last year. Google says the lowest fares can be found about 50 days before departure – so starting around mid-January, depending on when your spring break falls.
But let me tell you something: That’s way too late. Sure, you can chance it and not book anything for spring break until January. But then you run the risk of fares staying high – or falling, but to a destination you don’t want to go to – and then having no spring break trip at all.
This year, more than ever, it’ll pay to book early, book flexibly, set alerts, and keep looking.
Plus, our Thrifty Traveler Premium flight deal experts are finding spring break fares in March and April 2027 already – including some perfect, flexible options for 2027.
Here’s what we’re doing to secure our Spring Break 2027 flights right now.
Book Earlier
Most airlines let you book a full 11 months or so in advance. And that’s exactly when you should start looking for spring break flights.
If you haven’t done that yet, you are by no means out of luck. But it’s time to get going.
The airlines are sophisticated operations, but I promise they don’t have your kid’s school calendar. What they do have is a set of systems that analyze who is booking flights, from where (and to where), at all times, allowing them to adjust flight pricing in real time to match demand.
Who does have your kid’s school calendar? You do! And you also have the ability to book travel up to 11 months ahead of time.
There’s a potentially massive advantage to being first to book. If you book now – almost six full months before spring break – you can beat your fellow parents, teachers, and everyone else to the lowest fares. Once those fares are gone, the price almost always goes up.
I get it: That feels like a long way out to start planning spring break. Many parents don’t start thinking about spring break until January because things change – heck, kids change a lot in 11 months! Who knows what you’ll want to do in March or April of 2027 or 2028?
That’s why the kind of fare you book matters a lot, too.
Book Flexible Fares
The first strategy for booking spring break flights is foolproof … but only if you book a flexible ticket.
You want to be able to book a different trip if your plans change. And you definitely want to be able to rebook your flights if prices drop, saving even more – maybe even book a different destination if a better deal pops up.
And that means you don’t want to book the cheapest basic economy fares, as those can’t be changed, period. Canceling means you’ll forfeit a hefty fee.
There are two ways to stay flexible:
- Book main cabin economy fares
- Or book with your airline miles instead
Main cabin fares come with free change and cancellation, for an eCredit or voucher – not to mention all the other perks like free seat selection and maybe even a checked bag if you’re flying overseas. With the exception of Delta SkyMiles and JetBlue TrueBlue points, redeeming miles automatically gets you at least a main cabin ticket.
If you’re booking 10 to 11 months in advance, flexibility is paramount. And if flexibility is what you want, using your airline miles is the clear winner.
For starters, you’re committing a minimal amount of money (just the taxes and fees) to the trip, while locking down flights that work for you. Plus, finding award availability – seats that you can actually book with points – is often easiest far, far in advance.
Take, for example, this flight deal we just sent to our Thrifty Traveler Premium members a few days ago. We found cheap flights to Cabo (SJD), Puerto Vallarta (PVR), and Cancún (CUN) all for less than 23,000 miles roundtrip during March and April – peak spring break for most travelers. The same fares, bookable with cash, were more than $400 roundtrip per person in many cases … but not for travelers with points and miles.
Minneapolis (MSP) was one of many examples of these awesomely low spring break fares when booking (totally refundable) tickets with American Airlines.
When you use this deal to fly from, say, Cedar Rapids, Iowa (CID), to Cancún (CUN) for 19,000 miles roundtrip, you are booked into Main Cabin. That means, if your plans change, you can cancel these flights for a full refund of your points, taxes, and fees.
So, if something better pops up or your spring break dreams change, no problem! You simply cancel your award ticket and rebook a different flight. All the major U.S. airlines (and some big foreign carriers) allow you to cancel award tickets and get your miles back for free.
It’s the most flexible way to book flights, and it’s what every single one of us does here at Thrifty Traveler.
Be Flexible In Other Ways, Too
Whether you’re booking 11 months out or scrambling for something this year, there’s one key: You’re going to have to be flexible to find the best deal.
Adjusting your travel days by a day or two (or even your travel times by just a few hours) can save you hundreds, if not thousands, on flights.
If you want to fly out on Friday before spring break and fly back Sunday, odds are you’re going to pay the highest rate. But if you can wait to fly out on Monday and maybe return on Saturday or the following Monday, you’ll pay less. If you can book your flights on Tuesdays and Wednesdays – traditionally the cheapest days of the week to fly – you can save even more.
Let’s say you’re based in New Orleans (MSY), and you think the beaches of the Bahamas sound nice (who doesn’t?). Well, we found some cheap flights to the Bahamas for our Thrifty Traveler Premium members with March and April availability just a few weeks ago. When you pull up the Google Flights calendar for MSY to Nassau (NAS), what do you notice?
If you’re seeing that Tuesday and Wednesday flights are half the price of the flights departing on the weekends, I am too!
This is a tried-and-true travel hack that works year-round… and it’s absolutely critical during busy travel periods like spring break.
Read Next: There’s No Best Day to Book Flights…Only the Best Days to Fly
Set Up FareTracker
Everyone on the Thrifty Traveler team uses Google Flights Price Alerts to help hunt down the best rates for our own travels. You should, too.
Price alerts are incredibly helpful for letting you know when flights to book drop in price. For years, I used them to track the prices of flights I’ve already booked, too. It was one of the five things we all do before (and after) booking a flight, making sure we’re notified if the price of our flights goes down. I saved thousands and thousands of dollars by tracking my flights and rebooking them when prices dropped over the years. I’d say it happens on about half of the flights I book using cash.
I talked about this so much that my coworkers finally caved and built a free tool called FareTracker that anyone can use.
It’s easy: You take the information of the flight you’ve already booked, you put it into FareTracker, and then we track your flight 24/7/365, and we send you an alert if the price of your flight drops by $20 or more, along with step-by-step instructions on how to re-book it for the lower price or to get an eCredit or voucher for the difference in price!
You’d be wise to set up FareTracker on anything you’ve already booked for spring break, and then maybe add some Google Flights Price Alerts on the days just before and after your current flights in case prices on those dates drop, too. But you can also spread some around to other destinations (Maybe the places that were way too expensive when you first looked?) to see if you can score a better, cheaper trip.
This is how you protect yourself against fares dropping after you’ve already booked. I book my flights with 100% peace of mind, knowing I got the best deal thanks to FareTracker and Google Flights price alerts.
Keep Looking for Better Deals
I’m never done booking a trip until I’m on the plane. Remember how I said booking a flexible fare early on is so crucial?
No matter if you booked almost a year in advance or just a few weeks ago, last-minute spring break flight deals do pop up from time to time. In 2026, for example, we found some great spring break deals for our members within a month or two of travel.
It’s just that if you count on last-minute deals, you might be left out in the cold. As long as you booked a flexible fare (Remember, Main Cabin or higher), you can always replace your booked trip with the new, better deal and take that trip instead.
Where to Look for Spring Break Flight Deals
You know how and when to search … but what about where?
The answer to that question depends on where you live, and even that is always changing. We’d urge anyone to follow the deal and use a tool like Google Flights Explore, which’ll show you the cheapest destinations you can fly to from your home airport.
But I’ll give you a hint: Many of the best spring break flight deals aren’t economy deals to Florida or Arizona (where everyone wants to go to escape the cold). They’re further away and maybe even up in the front of the plane … at least that’s what our Thrifty Traveler Premium members are seeing.
This flight from New York (JFK) to Rio (GIG) was a perfect example. This is approximately the same price as the roundtrip flights to Orlando (MCO) on the same week!
I was tempted by this deal, and I sent it to every New Yorker I know.
But that’s nothing new: I’m always tempted by our deals – even going so far as to book this next one for myself last year.
This deal to Hawaii isn’t a cramped economy seat – it’s on one of Hawaiian’s Leihoku First Class Suites. I booked this for spring break 2026 about this time last year, and the experience lived up to the hype. That’s why I was ecstatic to see that the same availability popped up again this fall for travel in March 2027, so you can make one of these suites the perfect kickoff to your Hawaiian getaway.
In addition to the Hawaii lie-flat deal, we also found and sent award availability alerts to book Singapore Airlines lie-flat business class seats to Germany this coming spring for just 89,000 Singapore Krisflyer miles each way.
Business travelers aren’t taking to the skies as much during spring break season, which typically leaves lots of open seats up front. That’s when airlines release award availability to passengers like you and me who want to kick off their spring break vacation in style!
Bottom Line
Finding cheap spring break flights is a challenge. But if you’re proactive, use the right tools, stay flexible, and put in a bit of extra work, you can still book inexpensive flights.
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