Booking a spring break trip that doesn’t break the bank can be a serious challenge … and we love a good challenge here at Thrifty Traveler.
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 from Monday, March 31 through Friday, April 4, 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.
But don’t give up hope. Our Thrifty Traveler Premium flight deal experts find cheap spring break fares in March and April all the time – including some recent, last-minute deals that are still bookable!
Here’s how. Spring break 2025 (or 2026), here you come!
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.
You can also do pretty well by leaving it fairly late: Looking and booking within just a month or two of travel.
Everything else, though, falls into a zone I call the dreaded “Mushy Middle.” The months between those extremes – from June through January or so – are when the airlines hold all the cards … and charge the highest prices.
That means you should be booking next year’s spring break flights in April or May of this year, and then start looking again next January and February. Here’s why.
The airlines don’t have your kid’s school calendar. What they do have are a set of sophisticated systems analyzing who is booking flights from where and to where at all times, allowing them to adjust flight pricing constantly to match demand.
Who does have your kid’s school calendar? You do! And you also have the ability to book travel 11 months ahead of time, right as airlines put flights on sale.
There’s a potentially massive advantage to being first. Book 11 months out, and you can beat your fellow parents, teachers, and everyone else to the better fares.
I get it: That’s a long way out to start planing spring break. Many parents don’t start thinking about spring break until the fall for good reason. Things change – heck, kids change a lot in 11 months! Who knows what you’ll want to do in March or April of 2026?
That’s why the kind of fare you book matters a lot, too.
Book Flexible Fares
The first mover strategy to booking spring break flights is foolproof … but only if you book a ticket that’s flexible.
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 to save 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 cancelation, 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, some kind of 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.
If something better pops up or your spring break dreams change, no problem! You simply cancel your award ticket and rebook something else. 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 do here at Thrifty Traveler.
Be As Flexible As You Can
Whether you’re booking 11 months out or scrambling for something yet 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 here and there (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 until Monday, and maybe return that Saturday or the following Monday, you’re going to 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.
Read Next: There’s No Best Day to Book Flights…Only the Best Days to Fly
This is a tried-and-true travel hack that works all year round … and it’s absolutely critical over busy travel periods like spring break.
Set Up Flight Price Alerts
To a person, 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.
It’s 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 go down. I’ve saved thousands and thousands of dollars tracking my flights and rebooking them when the price drops over the years. I’d say it happens on about half of the flights I book using cash.
For example, on this flight from Minneapolis-St. Paul (MSP) to Anchorage (ANC) last year, this alert saved me about $30 per person. That’s not nothing!
You’d be wise to set up price alerts on anything you’ve already booked for spring break, maybe adding another few on the days just before and after your current flights in case prices on those dates drop. 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.
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 whether you booked almost a year in advance or just a few weeks ago, last-minute spring break flight deals pop-up all the time. This year, for example, we found a ton of great spring break deals for our members – we still are, in fact! It’s just that if you count on last minute deals, you might be left out in the cold.
But if you booked flights to London for spring break months ago for $800 apiece, seeing a fare like this fare pop into your inbox from a Thrifty Traveler Premium flight deal alert subscription could save you hundreds on each ticket.
This screaming deal is more than half-off the normal fares between Miami (MIA) and London-Heathrow (LHR). So long as you followed our earlier advice and booked at least a main cabin fare, you could cancel and rebook this, pocketing the difference as an airline voucher to put toward a future trip.
Maybe you want to stay closer to home, and have a small stash of JetBlue points? You could have booked something even crazier.
Think about this: A family of five to Orlando for 10,000 points … not each, but total! We’re serious: So long as you booked a main cabin fare or an award ticket at the outset, you could dump that reservation and book this trip for a bargain!
There are also other points and miles opportunities. Every month, Air France and KLM put out a a few promotional fares flying through Paris-Charles de Gaulle (CDG) and Amsterdam (AMS) over to Europe. Earlier this month, they launched these reward deals to Europe for just 38,000 points roundtrip.
Focus on Reliable Cheap Spring Break Destinations
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.
Still, some destinations are reliably cheap every year for spring break. One of them is definitely Cancún (CUN). Just check out these prices for a spring break trip we previously sent our Thrifty Traveler Premium members.
These fares all but dried up a few weeks ago … but if you have American Airlines miles, we found another way you could still fly to Cancún for cheap this spring break.
Mexico is practically synonymous with spring break, but so is Florida. That’s why this flight deal to the Florida Keys (EYW) was so stunning, too – including March and April availability from all these cities and more!
And while Mexico and Florida have been dependable spring break destinations for decades, there are some newcomers over the last few years that are staying cheap during the months of March and April. Why not head over to Europe – specifically southern European spots like Italy?
We sent this deal just a few weeks ago. Many of these fares are still available for spring break 2025!
Once reserved for travelers in summer, Italy has really opened up as a spring break destination: The weather is still good, but you’ll be able to see what you want to see without the crushing summer crowds.
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.
