Booking the Cheapest Airfare

From SmarterTravel

Finding the best deals on flights can be a daunting proposition. Fares can seem unpredictable, varying by hundreds of dollars from one day to the next. There is, however, a method to the madness, and by spending a little time searching and being flexible about the details, good deals can still be found.

Book at the Right Time

To get the lowest fares, purchase tickets at least seven days in advance, and ideally 14 or 21 days out. Many of the cheapest tickets are restricted to advance purchases of 14 days or more. Often, the cheapest tickets are made available one to three months in advance, so booking one year in advance won’t yield the best ticket prices; it is best to book a few months out.

For holiday travel, however, these rules tend not to apply: if what seems to be a good price is available, you’d probably do well to buy it, regardless of how far away the flight is. Similarly, for international travel good deals can often be found farther in advance.

Travel on the Right Days

The days of the week chosen to depart and return make a difference in overall price as well. Historically, Fridays and Sundays are the busiest days of the week to travel, which also makes them the most expensive. In general, the lowest fares can be found by traveling midweek, on Mondays through Thursdays. For weekend travel, Saturdays are generally the most affordable option.

Although some airlines did away with Saturday-night stay requirements in the recent past, those requirements are steadily coming back. Including a Saturday night in an itinerary will often lead to the lowest fares, particularly on the major airlines. In addition to Saturday night minimum stays, many fare rules mandate a maximum stay as well, most often 30 days or three months.

The season also makes a big difference in the price of airfare. Avoid traveling during a destination's high season, and instead take advantage of off-peak or shoulder-season reduced prices. For example, flying to Florida in the summer will be cheaper than in winter, while Europe will be cheaper in winter than in summer. When traveling around holidays, traveling on the day of the holiday is usually cheaper than the days on either side.

Be Flexible About Travel Days and Airports

To secure the lowest fares on any round-trip route, space must be available on both the departure and return flights. If it isn't available in both directions, one leg of the trip can increase the price of the entire itinerary. It's worth experimenting with travel dates and even times until the lowest fare is found. Often, traveling a day or two before or after your original dates will make a big difference in the final price. Most major travel search websites and some airline sites allow travelers to look for fares using flexible searches. Some of these flexible searches allow travelers to search for a several day window around a desired flight day, while others will bring up a matrix with the cheapest travel days.

Flexibility can extend to arrival and departure airports as well. Many cities have several airports, and flying into a secondary airport could save money. When booking airfare, experiment with different airports. London, for example, has five major airports, New York has three, and Chicago has two. Many airfare searches will allow users to search for all the airports near a given city using a city code rather than an airport code, for example LON for London, CHI for Chicago, and NYC for New York. Other cities may require you to search for each airport individually, for instance PVD (Providence, RI) and MHT (Manchester, NH) as well as BOS (Logan International) for Boston, or FLL (Fort Lauderdale) and MIA (Miami International) for Miami.

Search All Airlines, Book With One

Online travel agencies (OTAs) like Travelocity and Expedia search numerous airlines and find the best prices available. They also tack on a $5-10 service charge per booking. If the cheapest airline to fly with comes up on one of these sites, try booking the ticket directly from that airline’s website; airline websites do not charge booking fees. Sometimes booking with an OTA can be the best deal, such as on complicated itineraries involving multiple airlines. Meta-searches like Kayak search both online travel agencies and airline websites, displaying the absolute lowest price, though they do not include all sites. For instance, Kayak does not display results from AA.com, though it will find American Airlines fares from Orbitz.

Consider the Fees

With the recent addition of countless add-on fees for things such as baggage, food and drink, and seat assignments, finding the cheapest airfare has become even harder. Just because the base fare that shows up online is cheapest doesn't mean that it will still cost the least after all the fees have been added in.

Check the table of airline fees when comparing airfares and figure them into your considerations. If two ticket prices are within $20 of each other and only the cheaper airline charges a fee for the first checked bag, it may not truly be the cheapest.

Name Your Own Price

Booking airfare without knowing the time of the flight or which airline it is on is an intimidating thought for many travelers, but it can also be a great way to save money on airfare. This type of retailer is called an "opaque" provider because the prices, departure and arrival times, and/or airlines are hidden from the buyer until the sale is final.

The two major opaque sites Hotwire and Priceline, offer customers some of the lowest prices available by not telling potential flyers some details until after they've agreed to purchase.

By allowing their airline partners to maintain anonymity during the purchase process, sites like Hotwire and Priceline can sometimes offer prices that are well below the published prices. This is because airlines need to fill unsold seats but don't want to promote prices that will undercut their own pricing structure.

If departure times and airlines are flexible, frequent flyer miles are not a consideration, and there will be no flight changes or cancellations, these sites can save money, though with airlines’ recent woes, the deals found on such sites have not been as good as they once were.

Hotwire

Hotwire features both Limited Rate fares and regular fares. The Limited Rate fares are Hotwire's opaque fares, displayed in red. Using Hotwire's Flexible Dates Search is an easy way to find the cheapest fares, both Limited Rate and regular, over any 30-day period.

For limited rate fares, the details of the flights are not displayed until the ticket has been purchased. Hotwire sells opaque fares from major US and international carriers.

On domestic flights, Hotwire allows customers to specify whether or not the flight will be a red-eye, and other such restrictions. The more flexible the customer is, the lower the fares will be.

Priceline

Priceline offers a name your own price feature that allows customers to bid for rock-bottom prices on airline tickets (up to 40 percent off, according to its website) and other travel products such as hotels and car rentals. The caveat is that if a bid is accepted, the ticket must be purchased. Priceline also has a best-price guarantee, so it's possible to get a complete refund if after booking an opaque fare a better price for the exact itinerary pops up.

When bidding, don't forget that the suggestions outlines above: Book seven, 14, or 21 days in advance; travel off-peak; and include a Saturday-night stay. According to the helpful website bidontravel.com, while priceline might suggest a bid amount, the recommended percentage is often a conservative estimate, and it might be worthwhile to bid even lower. Even if a bid is rejected, by bidding early and low, it's easy enough to increase a bid over time.

Last-Minute Airfares

Although waiting until the last minute to book is usually a bad idea, it can sometimes still yield good deals. Airlines often release last-minute sale fares at rock-bottom prices for flights they haven't filled to entice customers to take a spontaneous weekend trip. For travelers just looking to get away, this might be a good option.

The major airlines (American, Continental, Delta, United, and US Airways) and smaller airlines (like Alaska Airlines) all release last-minute sale fares on Mondays, Tuesdays, or Wednesdays for travel in the days and weeks ahead. Last-minute airfares usually depart on Fridays, Saturdays, or Sundays, and return on Sundays through Wednesdays. Low-cost carriers such as Southwest do not offer last-minute airfares on a schedule.

Below is a general guideline of the domestic airlines that offer last-minute fares, as well as the days of the week that they release the sale fares.

Mondays:

• Alaska (domestic travel beyond this weekend)
• Delta (domestic travel for this weekend)

Tuesdays:

• American (domestic and international travel for this weekend, next weekend, and beyond)
• Continental (domestic travel for this weekend)
• United (domestic and international travel for this weekend, next weekend, and beyond)

Wednesdays:

• US Airways (domestic travel for this weekend, and international travel for this weekend and beyond)

Attractive last-minute fares should be booked as soon as possible, as the last-minute specials are very limited and sell out quickly. A fare that is available in the morning will often be sold out by the afternoon. The greatest number of last-minute deals are generally to or from airlines' hub cities.

Smarter Travel’s Last-Minute Airfare newsletters are a good way to track these deals. They are tailored to a chosen departure city. Domestic airfare newsletters are sent on Wednesdays, and international airfare newsletters are sent on Fridays.

Consolidator Fares

Consolidators are ticket brokers that buy air tickets (primarily international tickets) directly from the airlines and re-sell them to travelers at discounted prices, sometimes at prices up to 70 percent lower than the airlines' published prices. While some consolidators may purchase their entire inventory in bulk, most consolidators buy tickets at volume prices from the airlines, but actually purchase tickets one-by-one as travelers book. Many of the problems travelers have with consolidators arise because the consolidators do not have control over the tickets they sell, so it's important to note this distinction before booking. If there is a problem and flights change, such as because of a missed connection, travelers on consolidator tickets will generally run into more problems than travelers on tickets purchased from the airlines.

Many consolidators allow customers to book tickets online, although some sell exclusively to travel agents. Look in the travel section of the Sunday newspaper and there may be advertisements for cheap airfares from consolidators. Several online consolidators include AirlineConsolidator.com, Airsaver, and BargainTravel.com, although there are many others.

Student Fares

Some airlines offer special student fares, which can save younger travelers money while flying. STA Travel, Student Universe, and TravelCUTS are the biggest student travel agencies. Students deals from these sites are generally best on international flights.

AirTran offers a student stand-by program where students can fly standby day-of for deeply reduced fares, through there is no guarantee space will be available on a given flight. Southwest has a special student version of their Rapid Rewards frequent flyer program where students earn a free round-trip after four round-trip flights (after three round-trips with their current special offer).

Special Considerations for International Travel

The general rules for finding a low price on international airfare are similar to booking domestic airfare: Book at least seven, 14, or 21 days in advance, travel midweek, and include a Saturday-night stay in the itinerary. Good international fares are often offered further in advance than domestic fares, so starting to search several months before your planned travel dates is a good idea.

Unlike domestic flights, it may actually make sense to book different legs of a trip with different airlines for complicated international itineraries. Europe in particular has many intra-European low-cost carriers (LCCs) that offer super-low fares, sometimes as low as $10 each-way. If flying to a less touristy destination from the U.S. (Budapest, for example) where low fare are hard to come by, try flying into one of Europe's hub cities, such as London, instead. Then, book an additional flight from London to Budapest on an intra-Europe carrier. EasyJet and Ryanair are two of Europe's major low-cost carriers, with prices significantly lower than larger airlines' prices, though there are countless others as well. These airlines usually require passengers to book directly on their website and do not list their fares elsewhere. India also has numerous domestic low-cost carriers with super cheap fares, and there are a growing number of LCCs in Asia.