Find a Low Airfare

Using the internet to find low airfares is getting trickier as more options present themselves. Increasingly, airlines are offering their best deals on their own websites. Finding a low airfare requires some good research skills, patience and an ability to check the internet at different times of the day. Here are some suggestions to help guide your search.

Steps

Searching Across the Internet

  1. Shop around. Don’t assume that all online travel agencies have the same fares. They don’t. Especially on international fares, one of these online travel agencies could have a fare several hundreds dollars less or higher than another. It is not uncommon for one site to have tickets that aren't even available on another site. Check all the online agencies, and use multi-site search engines.
    • For example, in one search test, Travelocity was selling seats to London on Virgin for $400-$470 round-trip, taxes included, from east and west coast cities, even for peak summer travel. Those fares were only available on Travelocity, not Orbitz or Expedia (they weren’t even available on Virgin’s own site).[1]
  2. Search airline sites individually. Increasingly, some airlines have “private” sales, reserving their very best fares for their own sites. With the exception of Southwest, which sells fares on its own site exclusively, most of the airlines that do this are smaller domestic airlines or large international carriers, but even Delta has done it, and not just for last minute weekend fares.
    • Alaska, Air New Zealand, Malaysia, Frontier, Qantas, Singapore, SAS, Varig and others are using this strategy.
    • Low cost carriers like USA3000 and Allegiant Air usually don’t share their fare data with third-party sites at all, although Jetblue fares are included in Travelocity, Cheapair.com and Kayak searches now, and USA3000 fares in Sidestep.

Gaining by Being Flexible

  1. Try a flexible fare search. If you’re at all flexible, you can sometimes save hundreds by adjusting your travel dates, often by just a day or two.
    • Travelocity has one of the most useful flexible date search options in the industry because it searches 330 days ahead; although it no longer includes international flights (of course, it’s limited, as all many online agencies are, by its exclusion of Southwest and several small domestic carriers such as USA3000 and Allegiant Air). To use this feature, simply click on the “Flexible dates” button just below the “to” and “from” boxes on the flight search engine (check these step by step instructions if you’re unsure how this works).
    • Try Travelocity's Asian affiliate Zuji.com . This contains international flexible searches listed in US dollars (they also show business and first class flexible date results).
    • Cheapair.com has a flexible search that also goes out 330 days but it charges $10 per booking vs. Travelocity's $5.
    • Orbitz has a limited flexible date function that searches a span of only 30 days (click on “Flexible dates”).
    • Expedia does flexible search only between a few dozen major US cities (click on “My travel dates are flexible”).
    • Sidestep.com and the other major sites have no flexible search capability. Increasingly, individual airline sites are improving their flexible date search functions.
    • American, AerLingus, Air New Zealand, Spirit, and USA3000 all have decent ones and Southwest and US Airways have good ones.
  2. Combine weekend fares. Last minute weekend fares are often great deals, but most people don’t realize that they can construct itineraries by combining two of these fares. Let’s say you want to fly from Boston to San Antonio next weekend, and you’ve signed up for all the weekly newsletters alerting you of these deals but there’s no Boston/San Antonio deals listed. However, if there’s a Boston to Atlanta fare for $128 round-trip, and an Atlanta to San Antonio fare for $108 round-trip, then there is indeed a Boston/San Antonio fare as well. Just buy two separate fares (Travelocity and some other sites do a good job of combining weekend fares in this manner). You can even combine such fares on two different airlines, but make sure you leave enough time in between connecting flights in case there’s a delay.

Getting Daily Deals in Your In-Box

  1. Sign up for Ding fares and Frontier’s fare alerts. Southwest offers daily “Ding” deals that pop up on your computer (announced by an audible “ding”, thus the name) that can save a few bucks off their already low fares at http://www.southwest.com/ding. Frontier Airlines has begun sending out similar fares by email. In both cases, the fares expire the same day they’re announced but they’re often good for travel far into the future. Frontier doesn't list its excellent weekend fares anywhere but on their own site at flyfrontier.com.

Going for the Package Deal

  1. Buy hotel air packages. It’s often cheaper to buy an air/hotel package rather than airfare alone. By “cheaper”, this means that the total package with hotel is often less than the airfare without the hotel component.
    • Site59.com is the online leader in this field. Travelocity owns Site59, so you’ll often see “TotalTrip” options on Travelocity just above the airfare-only search results. Don’t ignore these deals! Usually, they work best only if there are two of you traveling, since the hotels are based on double occupancy. They’re especially useful for last minute travel.
    • Tour operators and your local travel agent also sell packages that might save you money, although not necessarily on last minute deals.

Looking at the Right Times

  1. Know when to look. Some of the best "blooper" fares and other low fares show up on Saturday mornings. Here are the best theories as to why this is so:
    • Airlines can only change fares once a day (around 5 PM) on Saturday and Sunday. So, if you're an airline fare analyst, and you're trying to sneak one over your competition, you'll do it with the last fare change on Friday night, which appears in Travelocity, Orbitz, etc. around 1 or 2 AM on Saturday morning. Your competition can't match your sale fares until the 5 PM Saturday update (those fares appear in Travelocity around 8 or 9 PM that night).
    • Airfare analysts work under a great deal of pressure, and when they feeling this way, they are they most likely to enter a fare typo into their computer systems. The most likely time for this is probably on Friday night, after a long hard week, with the 10 PM fare update (after all, they're human, they've had a hard week, and mistakes do happen). And these 10 PM fare mistakes stick around until the 5 PM Saturday update, so you have all day Saturday to snag them.
  2. Check fares often. Because airfares fluctuate like the stock market, you need to check them every day, sometimes two or three times a day, if you’re serious about saving money. Airlines can update domestic fares three times a day during the week (at 10 AM, 12.30 PM, and 8 PM EST), and once on Saturday and Sunday at 5 PM EST (international fares are updated just once a day).
    • And another little tip: be sure to clear the “cookies” on your internet browser (on Explorer you do this under the “tools” menu and “internet options” sub menu). Why do this? If a fare changes between two separate searches done over time on the same route, some fare search engines may return the results you viewed earlier rather than the new, lower results.

Combining Fares

  1. Combine two separate fares rather than buying one fare. Say you’re flying from New York to Eleuthera in the Bahamas. Check on one of the big sites like Expedia or Orbitz for a single fare (for example, JFK to Governor’s Harbor, Bahamas) and then do two separate searches (JFK to Nassau and Nassau to Governor’s Harbor). Since JetBlue flies JFK/Nassau you’ll want to check JetBlue.com separately). Chances are, the two-fare strategy will save you a lot of cash. This fare trick also works for flights to Europe (fly into London or Manchester, UK on one fare and then hop on a discount European airline to reach your final destination) and Asia. To search route possibilities on these discounters, check out the Airfarewatchdog route maps page.
    • Note, however, that this approach is quite a gamble that only pays off if you manage to make your connecting flight on time. If you don't, it's your problem as opposed to the airlines', to provide hotel accommodation and a new connecting flight. Even in a best-case scenario, you'll need extra layover time to be able to claim and recheck your luggage.

Actively Seeking Refunds for Changes

  1. Buy tickets on an airline that will refund the difference if a fare goes down. Let’s say you’ve done your best to find the lowest fare, and then the day after purchase your non-refundable fare goes down $100. Sure, if you ask for it you can get a refund for the difference, providing of course that you don't change the times or dates of your flights (and the only thing that changed was the price); but it’s a little-known fact that some airlines will charge you a “service” or “administrative” fee as high as $100 for domestic fares or from $200-$300 on international ones, wiping out any savings. United, however, will give you the entire fare difference without extracting a fee, as will JetBlue as long as you accept the reimbursement in the form of a voucher good for future travel. Northwest charges just $25, for both domestic and international fares. American and Delta extract the $100-$300 fees; Southwest gives you cash back without charging a fee. Even on these less generous airlines, however, there have been plenty of instances where a polite entreaty will get you a full fare difference refund without the penalties, so it’s worth a try.



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Sources and Citations

  1. ↑ Test undertaken by initial author.
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