how to find the a public service of
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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 below or at right Fare watchers constantly monitor the lowest
airfares to a particular city (or to a bunch of
cities) so you always know what the best deal is at
any given time. We prefer Yahoo,
which shows you this information on your My Yahoo
page (which we check every day anyway for news,
weather, and stock prices). Once you've chosen your
cities, the lowest prices are listed there for you
every time you go to My Yahoo, with no extra
clicking required. This is a good way to stay on
top of cheap airfares to given cities. One catch,
sometimes My Yahoo doesn't always show the lowest
fare right away. (Once, My Yahoo showed the
cheapest flight to Vegas was $260, but when I
clicked it to find actual flight times, it found a
$198 flight. The $198 flight didn't show up in My
Yahoo until three days later.) Sign up at an airline's website and they'll send
you an email every week listing what
space-available flights they have for the upcoming
weekend. It's certainly more convenient to use
Travelzoo
if you've decided to travel on a particular
weekend, rather than looking through various weekly
emails from the various airlines. But if you want
details on great airfares to come to your mailbox
every week so you don't have to go surfing for it,
then this is what you want. Best
Fares lets you put in your departure city and
then shows the best fares available to other U.S.
cities. These sites focus on listing sales offered by
the various airlines for various destinations.
While you can find great specials here, these are
not the kind of sites where you type in a specific
city pair and travel dates and then get a list of
fares. PriceLine
lets you name the price you'd like to pay for a
given flight, though of course the ticketer may not
accept your offer. This seems like a waste of time
with this when you can easily get cheap airfare
using one of the sites above. Still, if you have
time on your hands, then you have nothing to lose
by at least trying to get a better fare here
than you can get from the other sites. Find
which travel days are cheapest More
fares than anybody If you liked my guide to Cheap
Airfare, you might like some of my other
sites: how to find the a public service of
MichaelBluejay.com |
Contact me
Cheapest Airfares
Cheap Airfare Tips
Search Engines compared
When your travel dates are flexible
International fares
Other sites
Exit Rows
Don't fly United
Fan mail
Fare
Watchers
Weekly Internet
Specials
Best fares from
your city
Travel Sales
Name Your
Price
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
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
Cheapest Airfares
Cheap Airfare Tips
Search Engines compared
When your travel dates are flexible
International fares
Other sites
Exit Rows
Don't fly United
Fan mail