The laser periodic heating method is widely used to measure the thermal diffusivity of various thin films. In this technique, surface temperature responses are monitored using either an infrared (IR) camera or a thermocouple (TC) detector. When conducted under air pressure, the effect of air heat loss on these two methods warrants further examination. In this study, we measured the in-plane thermal diffusivity of a polyethylene terephthalate (PET) film under air pressure using both a non-research-grade IR camera and a microscale TC. Results indicate that air heat loss significantly influenced TC measurements, yielding an abnormally large thermal diffusivity. Comparatively, thermal diffusivity measured by the IR camera decreased slightly with increasing modulation frequency. For films with a dimensionless thickness greater than 0.3, values obtained with the IR camera closely matched those under vacuum condition, indicating that the non-contact IR method can effectively suppress the impact of air heat loss.