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Get cheaper fares by
being flexible with your travel
dates
When you insist on
traveling on specific days, you pay a lot more for
airfares. If you're flexible about exactly when you leave
and return, you can get much better deals. This is our
#1 tip for getting the cheapest airfare. Ignore it at
your peril.
Sample fares we just checked:
- $444 - Insist on leaving on the 5th and
returning on the 7th
- $333 -Willing to leave on the 5th and
return on the 8th
Use the services to get great
deals when your travel plans have some
leeway.
Search
Engines
Most search engines now do flexible-date
searches, like Kayak
and Travelocity.
Tell them where you want to go and they'll show you the
best price by date.
Weekly
Netfares
Every Wednesday the airlines offer deep
discounts on undersold flights for that weekend.
Downsides: You usually have to leave on Thu/Fri/Sat and
return on Sun/Mon, and your choices of cities are
limited. As I'm typing this, the only trips available
from Austin are Denver ($147) or El Paso ($87), but those
are excellent deals for roundtrip airfare.
Rather than having to visit each airline website
separately, just go to Travelzoo
or Best
Fares and choose the city you want to travel from.
Then they'll show you all the deals from all the major
airlines. Many of these are decidedly cheap.
Of course, you can sign up at the individual airlines'
sites if you prefer. Here are the links:
American
Continental
Northwest
Southwest
United
Fare Alerts
by email
Lots of sites offer a "Fare Alert" service,
sending you an email about low fares between particular
cities. But you only need one, and Kayak's
fare alert service is pretty good.
Portals /
Home Pages
My
Yahoo gives you a free personalized start page
with news, sports, weather -- and the current
cheapest fares to any pairs of cities you choose. Very
handy, especially if you already check your My Yahoo page
on occasion for the other news and info anyway.
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 Thanks
for visiting, and I hope you liked the site.
I'll leave you with a couple of hand-picked
ads.
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Find
which travel days are cheapest
If your travel dates are flexible, just enter
the cities you're flying between and let
Travelocity find which days are cheapest to fly.
Being flexible with your travel dates is our #1 tip
for getting the cheapest airfare.
Travelocity.com
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If you liked my guide to Cheap
Airfare, you might like some of my other
sites:
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Summarized Tips for
getting the cheapest airfare
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Be flexible with your travel dates (click
"flexible dates" at Travelocity,
and see our flexible
dates tips).
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Book at least 2-3 weeks in
advance, 30 days for intl. flights.
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Fly mid-week if you can.
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Check fares at nearby airports (e.g.,
Newark, NJ instead of NYC). Most search engines
have a checkbox to do this automatically.
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Check roundtrip fares even if you're
traveling one-way. Round-trips are often
cheaper, for some strange reason.
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Travel on Thanksgiving Day itself instead
of the day before Thanksgiving.
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After Thanksgiving, return on Friday,
Saturday or Monday instead of Sunday.
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Fly on Christmas Day itself instead of
the days before Christmas.
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If you're traveling to more than one city,
use the engine's special Multi-City
search.
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Use the best website for your particular
situation. See our complete
tips.
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