Black Friday Flight Deals & Travel Tuesday 2026

Black Friday flight deals arrive on a fixed calendar. In 2026, Black Friday is Nov 27, Cyber Monday is Nov 30, and Travel Tuesday is Dec 1.

Airlines do run real fare sales across that stretch, with published codes and published terms. What has never been independently measured is whether airfare in general falls on those dates.

So the useful question is not whether to book on Black Friday. It is whether a sale that week happens to cover your route and your dates.

When are Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Travel Tuesday in 2026?

Thanksgiving is a federal holiday, so the US government publishes the date. Everything else in the sequence is defined relative to it.

The US Office of Personnel Management lists Thanksgiving Day 2026 as Thursday, Nov 26. The rest of the week follows from the calendar.

Cyber Monday flights and Black Friday flights sit inside one sale stretch

In 2025, carriers labeled the same promotion Cyber Week, Cyber Monday, Black Friday or Travel Tuesday, more or less interchangeably. Booking windows straddled all four days.

In practice it ran as one continuous sale period, roughly Nov 28 to Dec 5, 2025. The four named days are better read as one window than as four separate chances.

What is Travel Tuesday, and is it a real thing?

Travel Tuesday is the Tuesday after Black Friday and Cyber Monday, positioned as the travel industry's answer to those retail days. Hopper, an online flight marketplace, created it in 2017.

Hopper picked that date after analyzing historical pricing. By its account, that particular Tuesday had been the biggest for travel discounts in each of the previous nine years, going back to 2008.

2025 was the ninth consecutive year Hopper ran the event. The company brands it Travel Deal Tuesday, while press, airlines and searchers overwhelmingly say Travel Tuesday.

• Cyber Monday came first. Ellen Davis of the National Retail Federation coined the term in a press release dated Nov 28, 2005, to encourage online shopping on the Monday after Thanksgiving.
• Travel Tuesday came twelve years later, created by Hopper in 2017 and run every year since.
• Both were deliberately created marketing days. That is documented history rather than a criticism of either.
• It remains mainly a United States phenomenon, promoted by Orbitz, Travelocity, CheapTickets and major airlines alongside Hopper.

Is Travel Tuesday real?

Yes, in the sense that matters most. It is a real marketing event that coincides with a real spike in advertised airline sales, and those sales are bookable with published terms.

It is not established as an across-the-board fare drop. As of September 2026, we could not find an independent before-and-after study of transacted fares on the same routes across these dates.

Do flights actually get cheaper on Black Friday?

Specific sales are documented and real. A general fare-level effect has not been independently measured, and those are two different claims.

The statistics that circulate every November come from Hopper, and Hopper is precise about what they count. They count deals advertised and trips planned.

That is the only fare-price study we could find, and KAYAK built it from 2018 search data published in 2019. The same analysis put median Cyber Monday airfare 5% below the three Mondays around it.

It measures search queries rather than transacted fares, and it predates the pandemic reset of airline pricing. Read it as a hint about magnitude, single digit percentages on the median, not as a current number.

What the booking-window studies say

The major studies of when to book do not treat these dates as a variable at all. Three of the most current ones point the same way.

• ARC and Expedia, 2025. Their report on air travel myths examines eight of them without referencing Black Friday, Cyber Monday or Travel Tuesday.
• NerdWallet, updated Aug 6, 2026. The day you book matters less than how far in advance you book. It puts the domestic window at one to three months out and international at two to eight.
• The Points Guy, updated Sep 2, 2026. Its holiday booking guide advises booking Thanksgiving and Christmas flights even sooner than the traditional early-to-mid-October and Halloween deadlines, and does not name any of these three days as booking times.

This is the distinction the whole week turns on. These sales are aimed at a different trip than the one most people are shopping for in November.

What consumer reporting says to check

The Associated Press covered Travel Tuesday on Dec 1, 2025 with a set of practical cautions. They apply to any advertised travel sale.

• Sally French of NerdWallet, quoted by the AP, notes that a headline percentage does not tell you whether the underlying price was already elevated, or whether the same itinerary cost less last month.
• Double-check for blackout dates and other restrictions, particularly for Christmas and New Year's travel.
• Watch for nonrefundable fares, resort fees, double occupancy requirements or upgrade conditions inside an advertised discount.
• Some companies use statement credits, extra points, included amenities and bundled extras rather than cutting the price.
• Make sure the trip is something you genuinely want, not something a countdown timer pushed you into.

Which airlines ran Black Friday flight sales and Travel Tuesday deals in 2025?

Everything below is history. It describes what ran in late 2025 and says nothing about what any carrier will do in 2026.

Travel Tuesday flight deals in 2025, carrier by carrier

One pattern reads straight off the table. Delta and United put their headline promotions into vacation packages, miles and award offers, while the fare sales came mostly from American, Southwest, JetBlue, Alaska and the low-cost carriers.

American Airlines Travel Tuesday deals in 2025 and 2024

American ran a Cyber Week fare sale from Nov 28 to Dec 2, 2025, advertising domestic one-way fares under $100 and as low as $46. It also offered up to 50% off when purchasing up to 500,000 AAdvantage miles.

2024 had the same shape: round-trip domestic fares under $200, which American described as a way to unlock new escapes in the new year. That framing lines up neatly with the January travel windows.

The 2025 announcement covered the fares themselves, with travel windows and conditions living on the booking page. That is worth knowing when you compare one carrier's sale against another's.

Southwest and JetBlue Travel Tuesday deals in 2025

Southwest's 50CYBER promotion took 50% off base fares for continental US travel, bookable Dec 1 to Dec 4, 2025. Travel ran Jan 6 to Mar 4, 2026, Sundays excluded, with blackouts on Feb 12, 13 and 16.

JetBlue's SAVE35 took 35% off base fares, bookable Dec 2 until 11:59pm ET Dec 3, 2025. It applied to Monday-to-Thursday departures between Jan 6 and Mar 11, 2026.

• Nonstop, JetBlue-operated flights only
• Blackout Feb 11 to 24, 2026, covering the school holiday period
• Excludes Mint, transatlantic, EvenMore and cash-and-points bookings
• Base fare only, so taxes and carrier-imposed fees were not discounted
• A reusable code with no registration required

Frontier published its full terms, which is the clearest look at how a fare sale works

100% off base fares sounds like a free flight. Frontier's Cyber Monday release, published Dec 1, 2025, set out exactly what it covered.

• The discount did not apply to Y, B, N, L and U class fares
• Customers still paid government taxes and fees and carrier-imposed fees
• Seven-day advance purchase and round-trip purchase were required
• Travel was limited to Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Saturdays
• 24 specific markets were excluded, among them BOS to MCO, DEN to MCO and MCO to ORD
• Blackout dates covered Dec 18 to 31, 2025, Jan 1 to 5 and Jan 16 to 19, 2026, and Feb 13 to 16, 2026
• Tickets had to be purchased by 11:59pm ET Dec 2, 2025, for travel through Feb 28, 2026

Publishing all of that up front is genuinely useful to a shopper. Set beside JetBlue's SAVE35, it also shows the shape is structural rather than particular to one carrier.

What we do not know about Black Friday flight deals in 2026

As of Sep 7, 2026, no airline has announced a 2026 Black Friday, Cyber Monday or Travel Tuesday sale. We went looking, and there is nothing yet to report.

That is not a hedge, it is the calendar. Announcements have historically landed in the days right before the event: American's 2025 release came Nov 25, Hopper's came Nov 25, and Frontier's came Dec 1.

• Whether any given airline runs a named 2026 sale at all
• Any 2026 promo code, discount percentage or fare level
• 2026 booking windows, travel windows or blackout dates
• Whether 2026 sales repeat the January to March travel window the 2025 sales used
• Whether Hopper publishes 2026 deal-volume statistics, and what they would say

One practical note for the next two months. Some offers still visible online are 2025 sales whose travel windows extend into 2026, so check the booking deadline and not just the travel dates.

How to decide whether a sale fare is worth buying

1. 1

   Know the route's normal price first

   A percentage off means nothing without a baseline. Look up your route for the dates you actually want before the sale week begins, so you have a number to compare against.
2. 2

   Check the travel window against your real dates

   Nearly every 2025 airline sale covered a January to March 2026 travel window. If you are flying in December, a sale that week may not apply to your trip at all.
3. 3

   Read the day-of-week and blackout terms

   The 2025 sales commonly restricted departure days and blacked out high-demand periods. Those two lines decide whether an advertised fare exists on the day you need it.
4. 4

   Confirm what the fare is, not just what it costs

   Check whether the discount applies to the base fare only, and whether the ticket is changeable. Basic Economy generally is not changeable once the first 24 hours pass.
5. 5

   Use the 24-hour window deliberately

   US carriers offer either a 24-hour hold or 24-hour penalty-free cancellation on direct bookings made at least a week before departure. Our guide to the 24-hour flight cancellation rule covers how it works and where it does not reach.
6. 6

   Note American's July 29, 2026 policy change

   American updated its Conditions of Carriage on July 29, 2026 so that its 24-hour refund applies to tickets bought at least seven days before departure. The previous threshold was two days, so a last-minute purchase on American no longer carries that window.

Prices keep moving after you book, and the difference is paid out only when someone asks for it. Autopilot tracks the fare on your reservation from the moment you add your trip to takeoff, and reprices it when the price drops.

Already booked? A sale on your route can still pay you

There is one case this week creates that rarely gets covered. You bought a fare in October, a sale lands on your route in late November, and the new price is lower than what you paid.

Most US carriers dropped change fees in 2020 on Main Cabin fares and above. The change fee is gone, but the fare difference is not, and that is what makes a drop recoverable.

You rebook the same flight at the lower price and keep the difference. Our guide to repricing a flight walks through the mechanics carrier by carrier.

That reframes the anxiety this week tends to create. Buying before a sale is not a mistake you have to live with, as long as the ticket you bought can be changed.

Announcements have historically landed in late November, so that is when any 2026 Black Friday flight deals become checkable against your own trip. The two things worth having ready by then are your route's normal price and your real travel dates.