Update: To always have the latest airfare strategies at your fingertips, bookmark this guide to cheap flights: Tips to Find Cheap Airfare.
Over the last year or two I’ve done my fair share of flying and have refined my methodology of making sure that I always get the cheapest airfare available. I wish I could tell you “use this one service,” but in reality it doesn’t work that way. Since there are so many variables at play, you have to run searches at a number of sites. So how do you get the best airfare?
Independent:
Booking Engines:
Major Airlines:
- Airtran
- Alaska
- America West
- American Airlines
- Continental
- Delta
- Frontier
- Jet Blue
- Midwest Airlines
- Northwest
- Sun Country
- Spirit
- U.S. Airways
- United Airlines
International:
There are basically three types of airfare websites: 1. Aggregators (ex: Kayak) that check airfares for many different airlines. They do not charge a fee but instead rely on affiliate hotel deals and on-site advertising like Adsense to make their money. These are historically the best bets. 2. Traditional booking engines (ex: Orbitz) that check multiple websites and take a small fee ~$6 in addition to the price of the flight. They process the sale on behalf of the airline and keep the fee. 3. Airline’s own websites (ex: JetBlue). If you find a flight on booking engines, check the airline’s own site so see if you can get it for the same price minus the booking fee. The important subset of this are airlines who do not play nice and do not offer their fares up to aggregators (ex: Southwest). You have to check their sites individually.
In my experience there is no ONE website that you can use to get the lowest airfare every single time. It fluctuates quite a bit because there a LOT of variables involved. Don’t ask me why – it’s just how it is.
My recommendation to get lowest airfare:
- Start with Kayak and Yahoo Travel.
- Search Southwest and Jet Blue.
- Check the old-schoolers: Travelocity, Orbitz, Expedia.
- For good measure (and to be sure) check Cheaptickets, Hotwire, Priceline, Mobissimo, and Trabber.
- If you need to book a hotel with your flight, definitely check Southwest Vacations. They offer some of the best combo deals when purchased with Southwest airline tickets and they’re not available on the other sites.
You can also dig deeper using the quick list on the right. Try different days if you can (one day before/after), nearby airports (usually there’s a checkbox for that), and also check out building the flight with one-ways instead of round trip. This works especially if you have a 3-way flight or find that Southwest has a great 1-way price, but not roundtrip – then you can just use the other engines to get a cheap 1-way flight back.
If you feel really ambitious, check the airline’s own websites – list on the right (sometimes they’ll have unpublished deals).
When you find the cheapest flight that suits your needs, go ahead and book it. One of the things you’ll eventually run into is “oops, that $280 flight is now $320? messages. It will annoy the hell out of you. But that’s just how it is. You might want to check the other aggregators – sometimes you can catch what you just missed on and one and find it on the other.
Since travel is a big industry, there are a lot of shady websites/clubs/etc. that try to get your email address or try to get you subscribed to some service. I’ve never found those very useful for actually finding cheap flighs. The only exception is TravelZoo. I’ve signed up for their weekly Top 20 Travel deals email and I can say I’ve seen some impressive deals there.
Note: The above is mostly for US flights. If you’re looking for International, check out vayama.com, skyscanner.net, momondo.com, and trabber.com (non US). I haven’t tried them myself but I hear they’re good.
Feel free to share your flight booking strategies in the comments or give some travel tips of your own.
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TravelZoo rocks. Period.
Also – you might check Flyertalk (www.flyertalk.com) – their forums are amazing and if you travel a lot, you MUST master the art of the ff mile.
This might be a good post for me on CN, because well, I am deal master level 10 (which is the highest). In fact, I just got another free ticket on Delta.
:)
So cheapest air is just one part of the overall package. But for the air, your post is spot on!
Download the software “DING” from Southwest. I live in Portland, OR and I travel to the east coast every month. I just booked my trip for Feb. and I paid $49 each way to Manchester, NH. I have never paid more than $99 each way using the DING software. The deals you can get are unbelievable. You just have to wait until the month before you travel to book.
I tried out Southwest’s “Ding” but I found it too annoying (would ding even on “ok” deals), plus I don’t like anything that requires a software installation. Maybe it depends on your city.
I keep an eye on cheap-flight services, and I’ve found some pretty darn good deals with Air Fare Watchdog over at http://www.airfarewatchdog.com
Yeah I hate downloading software.
You might want to read our top ten tips for finding low airfare. Thanks for mentioning Airfarewatchdog, Joe Murphy. One of the best tips we’ve found lately is that increasingly, airlines are saving their best fares for their own Web sites. Not just Southwest, which doesn’t file fares with Travelocity et al, but Alaska, which has frequent 20% off sales; Spirit (which just had a site-only $24 off sale); USA3000 which has frequent coupon sales, Frontier, which only sells its weekend sales on site; and many international airlines such as SAS, Qantas, and Singapore to name a few.
In my experience over the years I have found http://www.itasoftware.com excellent for finding all the possible flights and connections, in the US and Internattionally. It doesn’t allow you to book, but its great to find possibilities in itasoftware and then book elsewhere.
http://www.dohop.com is also a good search engine for airfares.
Southwest and US Airways are the two main domestic airlines that don’t participate in the aggregators…
I’m suspicious of aggregators after a bad experience with FareCompare:
They showed a ridiculously good fare for one that was horribly expensive everywhere else. Being an aggregator, they wouldn’t actually book it for me. Their FAQ claimed that they had access to flight information hours before the other travel sites, so I should wait a few hours and then book it. Well, I waited…and waited…and waited…and fares only went up.
I sent them an email asking how to actually get their fares…no reply.
So maybe they really did a great ticket price, availability was limited, and someone else beat me to it. Maybe they had a database error. Maybe they were lying to me. It doesn’t really matter…whatever the reason, their data can’t be trusted. If you wait as they say, you’ll just give prices a chance to go up more.
Now I only believe ticket prices listed on sites that sell tickets. The aggregator can be useful to tell you what other website to go look on first, but if that second website doesn’t list Kayak’s price, the aggregator is wrong. Don’t wait, look elsewhere.
I also have learned not to book through Travelocity after a bad experience with them a year ago. I cancelled the second half of a ticket when work sent me from Christmas vacation onto a business trip. They told me I could call them and claim the credit when I next booked through them with the same airline (United). I did so. They told me the ticket number wasn’t in their system (or some any other information I gave them – I had the original confirmation email and everything they’d told me when I called them to cancel) and transferred my call to United. United told me that my ticket number didn’t start with the right prefix to be one that they issued and couldn’t help me either. Lesson learned: just book with the airline directly and skip the run-around if something goes wrong.
Summary: window-shop with the aggregators or conventional travel sites. Go book with the airline. If the airline doesn’t actually have the same price, use a different aggregator.
Let the buyer beware…
Just make sure you *don’t* EVER use Travelocity.
They tried to screw me out of >$600 for a ticket on US Air that calling the airline directly I got for $140…
Just MHO.
These are great tips, thank you! But what would you recommend to find best deals on hotels?
For hotels I usually use a combination of Farechase and TripAdvisor. Farechase is nice because you can search by location on a map (which is killer) and TripAdvisor is great for gathering opinions of hotels as well as checking prices from Expedia.com, Orbitz.com, Hotels.com, Travelocity, and Accorhotels.com all with a single search box.
To be honest, I am so fed up with onlne fare info. It is usually very expensive. Unless I am using a known airline system (like RyanAir – who are crap in anycase – left me stranded in Beauvais, Paris at 1am with all my family and luggage) then I just try and get info from the web and negotiate at my local bucket shop and get my ticket in hand!
I love Sidestep, especially for last minute travel.
SkyLow.com is a new venture which aggregates into a search engine quite a large number of worldwide low cost airlines. Their advantage is that they allow bookings on their site rather than redirect you to the airline. The ability to make a booking is great as in 4 steps they make a booking. They are growing every week with more and more airlines.
They have an amazing tool to find cheapest options: Deal Finder.
http://www.skylow.com seems to target the backpackers and low budget travellers as they are regional flights focused.
Wow Reem, 2 comments and 1 email from you. You should really take ownership when you post something like this instead of making yourself seem like a 3rd party (and not CEO). No Firefox/Mac support, horrible usability, pain in the ass form (select country, select state, THEN select airport – are you kidding me?!), and inaccurate flight information (two $69 flights magically turned into $400+ airfare).
Sorry, skylow gets a big thumbs down.
This post is very helpful. You’re right, sites like Orbitz, Expedia, etc. do charge an extra fee. You should always check the specific airline’s site to compare. Midwest Airlines’ policy is to always offers its lowest available fare for a given travel itinerary on its own site — midwestairlines.com. (It is on the aggregators as well as on some of the traditional booking sites.)
By the way, aggregators also work well to help find hotels. I use kayak to narrow down my hotel choices for my trips.
tish
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There is a great site that i use all the time for traveling. http://travel.allmyfaves.com it just has all that i need for travel.
my husband and i are planning to go to cabo sometime in between november and april. Doesnt matter when, what time or whatever. we just want the cheapest tickets. i am usually good at finding deals, but since we can go antime i am not sure if a certain month is cheaper than another, certain days, book right before, book in advance, etc. we can fly from either portland or seattle, as we live between the two. any advice on how to get the best deal?
In German language I can recommend http://flug.idealo.de
Thanks for sharing this, you are a great man.
SkyScanner.net is really good if your destination is listed
I’m from the site called http://www.momondo.com
I would clame that we have one of the widest coverages in Europe on low-budget airlines, so we’re a great tool if you want to jump around Europe.
We also do cover american destination, but we no where near the same coverage, so if you’re smart, you should also check out kayak and some of the others (better safe than sorry!).
What differs Momondo from a great deal of other sites, is that we actually do a search across all the airlines we have listed. Most sites only cover the airline/agencies that give comission.
I hope you’ll consider trying us out !
Kind Regards
Rasmus Velling
Momondo.com
i want to travel by the cheapest air fare from 5th to 25 aug 2007 from delhi srinagar delhi how can i check full detail for the entire period
Believe it or not, Overstock.com can be a good source for cheap fares too!
Charter flights are usually a great deal if you’re going to a vacation spot, but does anyone know of a website where you can compare Charter Flights or Charter Flight/Hotel Packages?
Guys, for flights originating Europe and especially UK try http://www.traveljungle.co.uk
You will be surprised :)
If you’re flying within Europe you should consider the metasearch engine Momondo.com.
They have the most comprehensive flight search on lowcost airliners. Your request goes out to 422 sites, with more than 600 airlines.
and lets not forget to book on a tuesday. if you book on days that nobody wants to fly on, you can usually get a good deal.
http://www.gordonphoto.net
Don´t forget to check http://www.dohop.com, it searches both low cost carriers and traditional carriers. Get´s me the best price most of the time, at least in Europe. For US kayak may be better.
I think you use Travel search engine like sidestep to know the guideline of price and you can find other website to compare.
I have had some luck with watching travel agents windows to find cheap flights to big cities like Bangkok London LA San Franscico. What I do is go in and ask them about the discount flights and see if they will be ongoing promotions if I plan on going to a city on the advertisement. One time I was going to book a cheap flight on China Air I went into a travel agent next to my office and he was able to save me $50 more on the same seat becuase of an incentive that they had for the travel agents to use.
I am interested in finding a web site where I can get a listing of what airfares are being offered now for travel between two cities over the next, say, six months. I don’t really care on exact dates but will travel whenever I can get the best fare. My main interest is international and I am US based presently. I tried ITA (spomeone’s ealier post) which allows a one month seach but seems to have a limited selection (ie I did better myself on Kayak than ITA did). Thanks.
I always check the major travel sites (Expedia, Orbitz, etc.) first to get a baseline and see what fares I’m trying to beat. It helps put everything else in perspective.
Do you know of a site where I can search for the cheapest flights to any location from a certain airport? In other words, the destination is the main variable and the key deciding factor is the ticket price. Thanks!
@Jenn: I’m not sure anything like that exists, aside from Orbitz travel deals that lets you search from a certain airport, etc.
thanks. i’ll look at orbitz again.
i hunted around a bit, & the closest i found is on kayak. to the right of the main search fields, there’s a section titled “Popular Flights from [Oakland (OAK)]” & below a few options, it says “See more destinations for [OAK]” — clicking on this last link gives me some options… but it’s far from great.
please let me know if you come across a better solution. THANKS!
I already do all that this post has listed when searching for flights but Im really loving the suggestions in the comments! Most of these sites I havent heard about prior to reading so thanks everyone!
What I found out is that Kayak, farechase and farecast are very good in most cases especially for air fare only. Expedia is good for vacation pacakage especially for hotel + air. If the cheapest airline is continental, go to continental.com to book the ticket, you can always save some $$$.
TravelZoo is fantastic – that just has to be said. Their weekly Top 20 just make me want to take more time off! :-)
Oh and then there’s also Swoodoo.de, but it’s mainly for European flights and you might need a basic understanding of German I’m afraid. They might offer a translated version, I haven’t checked to be honest.
EFlight is excellent for people in Australia!
Could someone please answer a question of mine? I was booking a flight that was $1,483 at 10pm and when I checked it again at 1am, it jumped to $2,100. It is an international flight and I know it goes up and down a lot. My trip is June 17 and I really need to book a flight now. Is it possible that it will drop back to $1,483? Many thanks!
I remember seeing a website that would show historical flight fares for each airline and the destinations,however I am now unable to locate anything at all.Has anyone else seen these?
Dale
These are great tips, thank you! But what would you recommend to find best deals on hotels?
@festival: Check out Airport Explorer’s guide to Hotel Deals
This might be a good post for me on CN, because well, I am deal master level 10 (which is the highest). In fact, I just got another free ticket on Delta.
For the cheapest hotels I have been having allot of success with Hotels Combined. They search multiple sites just like Sidestep or Kayak do for the cheapest airfares only they look for hotels not flights.
I also find that if you are looking for the really cheap hotels that the booking engines have no incentive to find the really cheap hotels and accommodations as they make no commissions, so you need to dig real deep. I will look on the big sites then see if the hotel itself has a page as many times they will be the price by allot. I also like booking direct so i know that the reservation is confirmed by the hotel itself.
EFlight – what a crock! As far as I am aware, if people want to compare flights, they want more information than just what the site sponsor, Qantas, is prepared to offer.
The last time I had International flights to book out of Aus, I actually found the AU arm of Expedia to give the best information and round-up of flights available, but next time, will definintely be trying the methods the author recommends!
Great post buddy…this is awesome post..anyway, i love traveling so im sure this would be a big help for me..
that if you are looking for the really cheap hotels that the booking engines have no incentive to find the really cheap hotels and accommodations as they make no commissions, so you need to dig real deep. I will look on the big sites then see if the hotel itself has a page as
thanks. i’ll look at orbitz again.
i hunted around a bit, & the closest i found is on kayak. to the right of the main search fields, there’s a section titled “Popular Flights from [Oakland (OAK)]” & below a few options, it says “See more destinations for [OAK]” — clicking on this last link gives me some options… but it’s far from great.
please let me know if you come across a better solution. THANKS!
I use Airfare Watchdog to notify me of deals and then I book directly on the airline websites. If you are patient enough you will usually get the fare you want. I enter the cities I am planning to travel to several months in advance on Airfare Watchdog.
And sometimes if you fly long haul, taking a stopover can work out cheaper still.
Searching for those possibilities is one step harder. I am trying to do something in that direction but early stages so far.
I use cFares.com for finding cheap flights and exclusive deals. They’re a consolidator site too and are great for both domestic as well as international flights. I’ve found that they consistently found me the lowest fares and as a member i get additional rebates too.
Yes Ding is a good solve..But I hate downloading a software..
Thanks for your advise…
Best regards..
I would like recommend http://www.viviro.com – it’s a brand new danish site and one of the best I have tried. For now it is optimised for the scandinavian market but according to the founder it will be launched in US and UK in 2009. Try it out…
And sometimes if you fly long haul, taking a stopover can work out cheaper still.
Searching for those possibilities is one step harder. I am trying to do something in that direction but early stages so far
Thanks..To be honest, I am so fed up with onlne fare info. It is usually very expensive. Unless I am using a known airline system (like RyanAir – who are crap in anycase – left me stranded in Beauvais, Paris at 1am with all my family and luggage) then I just try and get info from the web and negotiate at my local bucket shop and get my ticket in hand!
I would like to recommend http://www.Airbubba.dk – It’s a danish site with flights from all of the largest suppliers in scandinavia. As far as I have heard they are making an international version during 2009.
I do a lot of travelling in Europe. I’ve tried using momondo.com. They have a nice site.
I have had an even better experience with dohop.com
They’re engine is really faaaast. The bonus is that I have often saved from 30% and up to 50% on a return ticket just by using their site.
I had good experiences with CONTINENTAL, as in getting good flights and miles combined for good deals.
I usually use airgorilla.com for looking up flights, hotels and car packages then bring my finds to a local travel agent ( here in China) and they type the info into the computer..etc.
Orbitz doesn’t allow tickets originating from China and I found better deals for international flights on airgorilla.com
Commenting usually isnt my thing, but ive spent an hour on the site, so thanks for the info
After searching, cheap tickets, kayak, travelocity…….. the cheapest fare was thru American Airlines themselves by $100 dollars with no stops.
Check out http://www.optifly.com – they have a cool new tool which allows you to visualize routes and easily plans trips using a combination of both major and all low cost carriers.
There’s also a very cool new flight planning tool called Optifly! (http://optifly.com) Optifly actually shows you your route options using Google maps or even Google Earth. Optifly also shows both commercial airlines and low cost carriers. You can even click through to view Expedia prices. It’s cool to be able to use the low cost carriers WITH Expedia to ensure you get the best prices on your flights.
Optifly even shows helpful city information like government information and links to travel guides and lists of all flights and all budget flights out of a single airport.
Check out http://optifly.com/fo-LAX-JFK.aspx for an example of Los Angeles to New York.
It’s a pretty cool tool for finding cheap flights and having some insight on your options. The url is optifly.com
I usually use kayak to find a flight and then I use letmebook, where the guy checks manually (for free) if the flight I found is the cheapest one.
And sometimes if you fly long haul, taking a stopover can work out cheaper still.
I already do all that this post has listed when searching for flights but Im really loving the suggestions in the comments! Most of these sites I havent heard about prior to reading so thanks everyone! tnx
Searching for those possibilities is one step harder. I am trying to do something in that direction but early stages so far
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