15 Tips for Cheap Travel: #2b) How to Find Cheap Plane Tickets
This is the second post (part b) of the series “15 Tips for Cheap Travel.” You can navigate the rest of the series by going to the 15 Tips for Cheap Travel Index.
Wouldn’t it be nice to just go to one website or call just one phone number and find the cheapest plane ticket? Maybe someday this will occur. For now, the best way to find a cheap plane ticket is to spend some time doing research and checking multiple websites. I’ve divided this section into “fixed vs. flexible.” (If you haven’t read the post on planning your vacation you can find it here.)
If you have Fixed Dates and a Fixed Place: (i.e. you want to go to Boston from Washington DC on July 3rd to July 10th)
When you have fixed dates and a fixed destination the best option is to use Aggregators. These sites search hundreds of sites find the cheapest flight out there. My favorites are:
It doesn’t hurt to also try a few traditional online travel agencies including: Orbitz, Expedia, and Travelocity. If you use these be sure to book through the airline’s own website though (see tip 3 below)
If you have Fixed Dates and a Fixed Place, and your dates are within the next few weeks also check Site59 which finds package deals within the next two weeks. Even if you don’t need a hotel at your destination, sometimes it finds an entire package cheaper than you can find a flight alone.
If you have Flexible Dates: (i.e. you can go anytime in July or you can leave within 1-3 days of a particular date)
If your dates are within 1-3 day spread (i.e. you can leave July 1st, 2nd, or 3rd): Use Kayak
If your dates are very flexible (i.e you can leave any time from now until July): Fare Compare, Farecast, and Travelocity — All have searches available by the month
If your Destination is Flexible: These sites find cheap airfare to many places from your originating location.
If you want to see a Price History: Fare Compare, Farecast, and Kayak
A really cool feature: You want to Search by Activity: Check out Mobissimo Activity Search
Mobissimo lets you search by activity. You can search for flights by region (Europe, Asia, Latin America, Carribean, Middle East/Africa) or by other activities like beaches, spas “forgotten wonders,” opera houses, wine tasting, and more. It’s truly amazing.
General tips for finding cheap flights:
- Plan in Advance. The further out you know your travel schedule, the more time you will have to watch airfare prices.
- Be patient, but not too patient. If you’ve been researching for a while and a good price comes up, get it immediately.
- Buy direct from the Airline’s website (if you can). Most major airlines now guarentee the best prices on their own sites (though occassionally this isn’t the case.) There are two reasons to book directly with the airline you will be flying. First, many sites (including Orbitz and Expedia) charge an additional fee if you book through them. The major airlines don’t charge this fee. Second, and more importantly, you will get better service if something happens. Just recently my dad was returning home from a trip and his flight got canceled for no apparent reason. Even though I always tell him not to, he still books through Expedia. Well, let’s just say their customer service wasn’t up to par. Luckily the airline he was flying with was still willing to help him, but this isn’t always the case.
- Check Southwest.com. For some reason, Southwest Airlines isn’t searched by the flight Aggregators. If you are flying somewhere that they fly to, check their website for prices.
- Be flexible. If you are able to leave on Thursday and return on Monday you will often get better prices than if you fly Friday to Sunday.
- Don’t listen to the people who claim they can beat the system. (And their correction) Just like the stock-market, there are all sorts of people who claim they know what they’re talking about and they’ll tell you to only buy on certain days and certain times, etc. Go with your gut. If you’ve been researching prices and you feel that you’ve gotten the best one, you probably have.
- If the price goes down, it never hurts to ask. Sometimes you will buy a ticket and the price will drop the next day. It doesn’t hurt to call the airline and see if they’ll reduce your price. If they wont, don’t kick yourself; it happens to everyone: things go on sale just after you buy them.
- Consider the time of day that you fly and how it will affect your total transportation cost. If you can use public transportation to get to an airport, make sure you don’t buy a ticket for 6am before the subway has opened. (Likewise, if someone can drive you, don’t buy a ticket that is right in the middle of their work day). If you hadn’t paid $20 for that taxi ride, you may have been able to purchase a better plane ticket.
- (Update) Check out Farecast. Farecast is still in Beta and I just came across it today for the first time; but they have a cool little tool called Faregaurd. Farecast predicts whether an airfare that you are looking at (for only select cities in the next 90 days) will go up or down. They are so sure of their predictions that for $9.95 you can buy “insurance” which will protect your fare for 7 days from the day you buy Fareguard. You can find out more about how it works here. As I said, I’ve only just come across this site today, but after playing around with it for an hour I’m very impressed. I really like the arrows that it spits out to tell you whether to buy now or wait. They have nice maps and a good flexible search engine. This may be one of my new favorite travel sites!
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[...] 15 Tips for Cheap Travel: #2b) How to Find Cheap Plane Tickets [...]
Nice post! I’ve always had a great experience with Kayak. Although I must add that I have recently noticed that the price I see through Kayak is not always the price I see when I search through the airline’s website when it’s the same exact flight!! The difference has always been higher by within $2, but my sister’s seen it differ by $7 once. And $7 is still $7. So I guess, even if you search through those aggregator sites, it’s still a good idea to search through the airline’s website(s) as well. It’d take more work but that’s what shopping around is all about – finding the best deal.
I also read that if you see a cheaper price for the same flight you have already booked, you can let the airline know and they’ll do something about it (what they do depends on the airline). http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/travel/2003541377_pucci28.html
Great job on this series! Thoroughly enjoying it so far!
[...] Here is some good advice on how to find the cheapest fares online next time you need to fly. Check it out [...]
I have one tip to add too: if you’re a student, use a student ticket website like statravel. If that doesn’t work, a lot of companies (like Delta and United) will give you discounted fares if you call them and arrange tickets over the phone, just make sure to tell them you’re a STUDENT.
Flying out of other airports has really helped me in the past too (flying in or out of BWI or Newark when going to Washington & New York respectively has saved me a bundle of money — you can catch a 30 minute train ride for 15 bucks from these places to your destination too).
I’ve actually found StudentUniverse.com to have much better fares than STA….STA always seems to have tickets that are around $50 to $100 more expensive. Checking the airline’s own website is certainly the best advice around though, because I’ve found fares through AA.com that were just as cheap as the supposed student-discounted fares.
Hi,
I am from Denmark and I have been using http://www.flyrejsen.dk for the past couple of years to search for the cheapest tickets in Denmark. It works really well and the prices I see in their results are the actual prices I have to pay on the airline site !
[...] The folks at moneyfortherestofus.com wrote up a situation-specific guide for finding cheap flights. [...]
Dohop.com is a fast rising site. Saw the BBC report on it not too long ago. it’s plan is to have all the world’s airlines within it’s ranks. both low-fare and traditional.
do check it out
http://www.dohop.com
Europeans can look at http://www.skyscanner.net
Don’t forget to check out http://www.1clickbooking.com.
Financial Wake-Up Call 3-28-2007…
How To Find Cheap Plane Tickets: Elizabeth over at Money For The Rest of us is putting together a 15 part series on how to save money when traveling. While a lot of it is common sense, there are some good nuggets thrown in as well, so if you are planni…
I like buying peoples soon to expire Southwest travel vouchers on craigslist… you can pretty much fly anywhere southwest goes for $300. Check it out.
If you have Fixed Dates and a Fixed Place: I would highly recommend TripStalker ( http://www.tripstalker.com ) for this type of search. It was specifically developed for this. It is an “always on” desktop application that scans multiple data sources and updates you with the best price. It will also email, text or give you a desktop alert when your price drops below a specified notify price.
Hi
I am an Indian and wild like to Inform you that there is a search engine for travel in India also, One can find all cheap deals for Air tickets( http://www.zoomtra.com) and Hotels (www.zoomtra.com/hotels). The Site is called Zoomtra
Pooja
[...] 15 Tips for Cheap Travel: How to Find Cheap Plane Tickets digg_url = ‘http://www.hackcollege.com/2007/03/27/air-travel/’; digg_bgcolor = ‘#000000′; digg_skin = ‘compact’; 3:18 pm on March 27, 2007 | [...]
[...] unknown wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptFor now, the best way to find a cheap plane ticket is to spend some time doing research and checking multiple websites. I’ve divided this section into “fixed vs. flexible.†(If you haven’t read the post on planning your vacation you can … [...]
[...] Elizabeth presents 15 Tips for Cheap Travel: #2b) How to Find Cheap Plane Tickets posted at Money for the Rest of Us. [...]
[...] 15 Tips for Cheap Travel: #2B How to Find Cheap Plane Tickets [...]
[...] 15 Tips for Cheap Travel: How To Find Cheap Plane Tickets provides some detailed and helpful information about how to get good ticket prices to make a dent on your travel budget. [...]
I find it kind of weird searching for flights on a site called kayak.
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Great tips! Most of the links I didn’t know, so they came in quite helpful. There are so many travel sites out there these days, making it increasingly difficult to find a good deal. Everyone is claiming to have cheap flights, but it takes soooooo much time to sort out the real ones.
Happy traveling!
Chris
Life is what you make it!
http://www.nomad4ever.com
[...] 15 Tips for Cheap Travel: #2b) How to Find Cheap Plane Tickets | Money for the Rest of Us – [...]
[...] a. How to Find Cheap Tickets and b. How to Find Cheap Plane Tickets [...]
Some useful tips, but Momondo.com is clearly missing. Momondo has the most comprehensive free flight ticket search in Europe. Right now it scans 433 sites including more than 600 airliners and it is constantly expanding.
I am from Denmark, and I really like flyrejsen.dk There real time results are much cheaper than what Momondo finds.
This is the first site i’ve found in a long time with a good load of useful links. I’m a keen traveler and always looking for the best deals so i can get out there again. I find the STA are absolutely brilliant for round the world advice but only when u visit in store. the website isnt as good as the personal service.
Il be sure to visit this site again.
http://lejendzroundtheworld.blogspot.com/
[...] For most people, airfare is usually the single largest vacation expense. If you can figure out how to save there, you can dramatically decrease the price of your entire trip. I was surfing around on digg and came across 15 Tips for Cheap Travel: #2b) How to Find Cheap Plane Tickets on Money For the Rest of Us. The real value of this post is it has links to some good, lesser-known aggregators. Everybody knows about the big national sites like Travelocity, Orbitz, Expedia, etc but the smaller aggregators are often where the real bargains are at. I myself and partial to Airfare Watchdog. [...]
[...] Originally Posted by Statepug kayak.com i’ve been looking at that site, along with others listed in this article: 15 Tips for Cheap Travel: #2b) How to Find Cheap Plane Tickets | Money for the Rest of Us __________________ "Reality continues to ruin my life" ~Calvin (from Calvin & Hobbes) http://www.horseshaven.org/ Animals that have passed since I started volunteering: Olive, Elvis, EmmaLou, Billy, Slots (all 11/13/07). Hollywood (1/18/08). Clare (2/19/08). Betty (3/9/08). RIP guys. http://www.klophotography.com/index.html Es lo que hay dentro que cuenta. Bruise my kitty. –Ozy (with a word change by moi). [...]
This is a great site with many useful tips; however, I’ve noticed that http://www.travelmarket.com is missing from the list – you should visit this travel portal as well!
http://www.travelmarket.com
Nice Post!
Very helpful insight. Very good links to travel websites. Overall quality article.
I found another great site with more tips at http://www.goairfare.info
I will bookmark this page.
very intresting and useful information
I think these are great tips! I also find sites like http://www.tripntale.com very useful for helping my planning for trips to see other people’s experiences. They also have something called travel gems which is like a portal to all sorts of sites to help find great deals, hotels, food, weather, currency, etc.
You have really nice post. Now everyone smart for his saving. In July 2008 ATA has decided that they will not give any commission to consolidator and now travel sites are selling tickets without commission that’s why you can see most of the travel site due to high competition they are ready to sell tickets only on $ 10 on commission.