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How to get the cheapest lowest air fares

#1 Be flexible with your travel dates.

If you insist on traveling on specific dates you'll pay a lot more. If you can leave or return even a day earlier or later you'll often save you a lot of money.

This is our #1 tip for getting the best airfare! Ignore it at your peril.

For Example

$455 - Insist on leaving on the 5th and returning on the 7th
$335 -Willing to leave on the 5th and return on the 8th

If you're super-flexible and don't need to book right away, then try a fare watcher like My Yahoo to monitor prices on a daily basis, or sign up to get the airline's weekly email of discounted fares for unsold flights.


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#2 Book at least two weeks ahead, preferably three.

When you buy early you save. Book at least two weeks before your flight (preferably three), and at least 30 days for international flights.

For example

$444 - Booked 5 days in advance
$261 - Booked 19 days in advance
$192 - Booked 26 days in advance

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#3 Staying over Saturday no longer necessary.

So far as I can tell, the old conventional wisdom of staying over a Saturday night before returning is no longer necessary. I tried several searches and the return flight was never any cheaper if I set it for Sunday or later.


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#4 Fly mid-week if you can.

Weekend flights are usually more expensive because that's when most people fly. Flying midweek usually means a cheaper fare.

For example

$412 - Leave Sunday, return next Sunday
$337 - Leave Monday, return next Monday
$337 - Leave Friday, return next Friday
$314 - Leave Tue/Wed/or Thu, return next Tue/Wed/Thu


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#5 Using neighboring airports sometimes gets you cheaper airfares.

Several times people have saved a lot of money by flying into the Newark, NJ airport instead of into a New York airport, even though each was about the same distance from their destination in New York City. E.g People saved $200 by flying into Philadelphia instead of Atlantic City, then took a $6 train ride (1.5 hours) to Atlantic City. Travelocity and Orbitz can automatically search neighboring airports for you.

Kayak is nice by assuming you want to search nearby airports, and giving you a nice list of the prices for each airport it finds (rather than dumping all the results together). It's kind of slow, but not only is the nearby-searching feature nice, it also found our sample fare for $12 cheaper than Orbitz.

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#6 Always check the round-trip price even if you're flying one-way.

For some bizarre reason, one-ways often cost more than round-trip. For Example Austin to San Jose, and round trip might be $274, while one-way might be over $700!

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#7 Avoid busy holiday dates

Most people leave the day before Thanksgiving and return the Sunday after. For that reason those are the most expensive dates to travel. You'll save money if you travel on Thanksgiving Day itself, or if you return the following Friday, Saturday, or Monday.

Expensive
Day before Thanksgiving
The Sunday after Thanksgiving

Cheaper
Thanksgiving Day itself
The Friday, Saturday or Monday after Thanksgiving

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#8 Book multi-city trips using the special search

If you're traveling to City A, then to City B, then returning to your original city, use the special multi-city search provided by both Travelocity and Orbitz, instead of searching for three different one-way fares.


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#9 For U.S. to Europe, fly to London first

Kelly Fine of Alternative Wedding Ceremonies 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."


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#10 Use the proper website to search for airfare

To get the best fare you need to use the airfare search sites tailored to your situation, as listed below. You should also check at least two of the sites listed because no one site consistently gives the best fare.

For U.S. fares here's what you should usually do:

Check Sidestep if I need specific dates (otherwise skip this step).
Check Travelocity.
Check Orbitz.
See if Southwest or Jet Blue can beat any of the above.
If not, then go directly to the airline's website for the cheapest fare that Sidestep, Travelocity, or Orbitz found, and see if the airline will give a better price directly.

Go with whichever of the above is cheapest.
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