The price of flying home for Christmas has jumped nearly 14 percent in the past two years, but higher fares haven't put a dent in robust holiday demand for air travel.

The average price of a domestic round-trip plane ticket this season is $362 before taxes. According to an analysis for USA Today by Sabre Airline Solutions, a unit of travel giant Sabre Holdings, that's up 5.8 percent from a year ago and 13.8 percent from two years ago.

For the analysis, Sabre, which is involved in more than half of all airline bookings in North America, analyzed more than 2 million tickets for flights scheduled between Dec. 19 and Jan. 1.

A major reason for higher fares: More passengers will be squeezing into roughly the same number of airplane seats on domestic flights as a year ago. To boost fares and make the most of every tank of jet fuel, U.S. carriers have scheduled the same amount of domestic flying capacity as last holiday season despite stronger passenger demand.

The Air Transport Association, the nation's leading airline trade group, forecasts a record 47 million passengers will travel worldwide on U.S. airlines during the holiday season, despite the higher fares and signs of a slowing economy.

Friday was the single busiest travel day of the season, according to Sabre. Wednesday will be the busiest travel day after Christmas, but travel will be at a much lower volume than Friday's was, Sabre says.

The Transportation Security Administration also is bracing for more passengers flowing through airports but is not predicting longer waits in general at security checkpoints. "Thanksgiving traffic was higher than last year's, but our wait times were about same," TSA spokeswoman Ellen Howe said. At Thanksgiving, the average checkpoint wait was 15 minutes, TSA says.

Make a difference. Donate to The Advertiser Christmas Fund.