A Baker's Dozen Tips and Tricks to Find Cheap Airline Tickets
Here is a Baker's Dozen (13) tips and tricks to help you find the lowest
possible airline tickets.
- Search the airline sites themselves for low fares.
- Use frequent-flyer miles selectively...for coach seats on overseas flights, or
for first-class seats on domestic and overseas flights. Do not use them for domestic coach travel.
- Check several booking sites, including Cheapair,
Expedia, Hotwire, LastMinuteTravel, Orbitz, Sidestep and Travelocity. They
sometimes have different fares (especially on multi-hop and overseas travel).
- If your departure time is flexible, bid on Priceline but
only after you have found the cheapest existing published fare.
- If your departure date is flexible, check the Flexible
Dates box on the booking engines. Some (Travelocity, CheapAir) offer that
option, some don't.
- Sign up to receive "hot deals" emails from
your favorite airlines. If you fly Southwest or Frontier, sign up for their
special deal alerts.
- An old trick is to peruse the travel + hotel deals.
Sometimes they offer travel cheaper than the airfare alone. You will see these
on all the booking engines, including Site59.
- Travel early AM and on weekends. Early Saturday morning
often has the lowest fares.
- Keep checking. Whenever you have the time, check your
favorite sites to see if any extra-low or typo fares can be had. Some airlines
will honor typos, some refuse to.
- When traveling internationally, fly across the water on
a big carrier and then switch to a deep-deep discount airline for travel
within your destination continent (Europe, Asia, South America).
- Fly domestic discount airlines like JetBlue and
Southwest.
- All else being equal, purchase tickets on airlines that
let you pocket the savings if fares later drop. Northwest is best at this,
followed by JetBlue and Southwest. American and Delta charge $100, which
usually wipes out the savings.
- Check out DreamMaps on Travelocity. It's hidden, so use
Google to find it.
- Subscribe to AirfareWatchdog and CheapTickets email
alerts.
Wow, we actually wound up with 14 good tricks! Use these and you will be
flying high while spending low..
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