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Cheap Airfares

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by Michael Bluejay
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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.

 

Thanks for visiting, and I hope you liked the site. I'll leave you with a couple of hand-picked ads.

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

If you liked my guide to Cheap Airfare, you might like some of my other sites:

 

Summarized Tips for getting the cheapest airfare

Be flexible with your travel dates (click "flexible dates" at Travelocity, and see our flexible dates tips).

Book at least 2-3 weeks in advance, 30 days for intl. flights.

Fly mid-week if you can.

Check fares at nearby airports (e.g., Newark, NJ instead of NYC). Most search engines have a checkbox to do this automatically.

Check roundtrip fares even if you're traveling one-way. Round-trips are often cheaper, for some strange reason.

Travel on Thanksgiving Day itself instead of the day before Thanksgiving.

After Thanksgiving, return on Friday, Saturday or Monday instead of Sunday.

Fly on Christmas Day itself instead of the days before Christmas.

If you're traveling to more than one city, use the engine's special Multi-City search.

Use the best website for your particular situation. See our complete tips.

 

how to find

Cheap Airfares

Don't fly!   Flying causes climate change. (more...)

by Michael Bluejay
Award-winning writer

Contact me

©2001-08 Michael Bluejay Inc.