I discovered this about three years back as well. India has quite a few holidays when you are required to travel to your home with two major festivals - Diwali(Oct/Nov) and Holi (March). Since, it is important for people to be at home for these festivals, they would book early, or take costly flights, or alternate flights. With my parents being flexible, and understanding about how I love them even when I am a day late to be at home, I ended up booking the flight on the festival day, rather than before.

Cue and Behold. An empty airplane, with a total of 30-40 people in an Airbus 320. I got upgraded to business class for free. There were no lines for boarding. The plane took off on time, landed on time, and all of us could sleep in peace (or do whatever it is people do on planes).

From that time, if I am going home for a festival, it will be the day of the festival.