how to find the

Cheapest Airfares

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Cheap Airfare Tips Search Engines compared When your travel dates are flexible International fares Other sites Exit Rows Don't fly United Fan mail

Summarized Tips for getting the cheapest airfare

• Be flexible with your travel dates (click "flexible dates" at Travelocity)

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

• Fly mid-week if you can

• Check fares at nearby airports (e.g., San Antonio instead of Austin). Orbitz can search nearbys for you automatically.

• Check roundtrip fares even if you're traveling one-way. Round-trips are often cheaper.

• 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 Travelocity's or Orbitz' special multi-city search.

• For U.S. to Europe, flying to London first is often cheaper.

• Use the correct website for your situation. (See details.)


International Flights

Be a courier and save

How does $169 one-way to Europe sound? You can get ridiculously cheap airfares like this when you agree to carry a package as a courier. In fact, couriers sometimes fly for free. This requires a flexible travel schedule, but if that's you then you can score an incredible deal this way. Courier flights are usually only available for international travel.
  • AirTech. Offers fantastic rates to Europe, Mexico, and Hawaii.
  • AirCourier. They charge a membership fee but offer more services than AirTech. Unfortunately they sold our test email address to spammers.

There's a third site, AirHitch.org, but it's so incredibly user-hostile I wouldn't wish it on anyone. If you have a lot of patience you might be able to figure out how to get a good deal there, but when you have other alternatives I see no reason to bother.

U.S. to Bermuda, Cancun, etc.

USA3000 offers service between select U.S. cities and Bermuda, Cancun, La Romana, Puerto Plata, and Punta Cana. In Sept. 2004 we checked and found a roundtrip fare between Baltimore and Bermuda for $160 (!), while the best Orbitz could find was closer to $400.

Other international sites

Other sites we found which have good international fares are:
  • U.S. to/from Canada: Air Canada
  • Canada to everywhere: Sears Travel
  • Australia to Australia: Fare Hunter
  • Europe to Europe: Momondo.
    • Momondo's flexible dates feature is awesome. It gives you a GRAPH showing the price for every single day in any month you choose. Sweet!

Tip for flying into Europe

Kelly Fine writes: "We found that it was much cheaper to fly to London on one airline and fly from London to the Continent on another airline. This seemed to be true no matter what city in Europe we wanted to go to. And it was impossible to find a cheap flight from anywhere to Bratislava, so we found a flight to Vienna, which is only a little over an hour by bus from Bratislava. Flying into central and eastern Europe is much more expensive than flying to western Europe."

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

More fares than anybody
Orbitz carries more airfares than any other site on the planet, period. They're a good place to start your search. Recommended by Michael Bluejay.
Orbitz.com

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

 

how to find the

Cheapest Airfares

a public service of MichaelBluejay.com | Contact me

Cheap Airfare Tips Search Engines compared When your travel dates are flexible International fares Other sites Exit Rows Don't fly United Fan mail

©2001-07 Michael Bluejay Inc.