With 50% of the airlines in bankruptcy and schedules and capacity being reduced, the opportunity for discount airfares over Thanksgiving and Christmas will hard to find.

The quirk of the calendar is also playing a role: Christmas and New Year’s fall on Sundays this year, bunching up the peak travel window. When those holidays are midweek, bookings are more diffuse, putting less pressure on prices for peak flights.

To make matters worse, many airlines have restricted the number of cheap tickets available during the holiday season. The upshot is that while in the past three years, consumers could find bargain prices booking just a few weeks before busy holiday periods, this year many flights are filling up three months before Christmas.

So the calendar has not helped either.

The lowest price AMR Corp.’s American Airlines offered nonstop from Boston to Orlando on Dec. 23 with a return Jan. 2 was $1,161 Monday on its Web site. The same trip flying two weeks earlier would cost only $205 round trip. But the peak-period holiday flights — American has only one daily nonstop on the route in each direction — are mostly sold out already. Flight 1645 from Boston to Orlando on Dec. 23 showed only 18 of its 115 coach seats open for booking, according to American’s Web site. “We are booked more than in the past” systemwide for peak holiday travel days, said a spokesman for American.

From Philadelphia to Cancun on Dec. 23, US Airways has bookings for about half of its coach seats on its three nonstop flights, according to its seat maps. A round trip with a return Jan. 2 on the nonstop flights was priced Monday at $1,096, according to Orbitz. Two weeks earlier, the trip was only $425 round trip.

So if you are planning on traveling to see family, book your travel now. Otherwise the costs may be too much this year.