Flight ticket agencies in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou say flights for the upcoming Spring Festival, which falls on February 7, are getting expensive. With the new year less than 3 weeks away, steeply-discounted tickets are now almost impossible to find.

Flights from Beijing to Nanjing, Chengdu and Wuhan are always busy during the Spring Festival, as people return to their hometowns for the most important traditional Chinese festival to visit their families.

But starting this year, the seven-day May Day Holiday has been shortened, making it hard for people to visit their families then. And this has increased the urgency to return home for Chinese new year.

So plane tickets are getting much more expensive. Tickets for most flights departing after January 20 only have small discounts of less than 20 percent. And tickets for most flights after February 5, two days before the Spring Festival, aren't discounted at all.

Zhang Wei, Manager of Marketing Department of Ctrip.com said, "With Spring Festival approaching, and the seven-day May Day holiday shortened, more people are buying plane tickets to go back home now. So there are less discounts available."

In Shanghai, there are discounts of only 10 percent for this week's flights to cities like Chengdu, Wuhan and Hefei. They were discounted 40 to 50 percent just last week. But experts say cheaper tickets can still be had for people that travel 1 or 2 days after the Spring Festival, when there will be less demand for plane tickets.