I’m not an extensive traveler and I need to buy some plane tickets.
What are your tips for getting the best bargain? What days & times are the least expensive to fly? What is the best time frame to buy tickets (3 months ahead, 1 month ahead, etc.)? What is the best website, IYOE, for buying tickets (Expedia, Orbitz, etc.)? All advice welcome.
Impart your wisdom.
Thanks.
Check out two or three websites, Orbitz, cheaptickets and such. Find the lowest price and then go to that airline’s web site. Recently airlines have discovered that they can do what the Orbitz’s of the world do and not pay a fee to them, so you can now find rates at airline sites that are as good or better than the third party distributor sites.
Staying over a Saturday will generally reduce your fare and if you are a gambler, you can wait until 7 days of your departure and see if there are any really cheap tickets out there. It’s about a 50/50 shot. Generally your best deals are found in the 14-21 day range. But if you are three months out and see a great rate, I would go for it.
Fares are currently at a three month low. Rates dropped substantially at the first of the year, but they are starting to go up gradully now.
The best advice really, is to check some sites out and determine what is important to you. Do you mind a three hour layover in Cincinnatti or St.Paul? Or must it be a direct flight. Do you want to fly early in the day or later? I would recommend early so as to avoid the stacking delays that can occurr as the day goes on. But if your schedule is not too time sensitive, later flights - early evening can be less crowded.
Seconded. If you find a United flight on Expedia or such, look up the same thing on the United web site. You can almost always get it without paying the $5 Expedia fee. Every little bit counts.
I find that if time is getting short, or I’ve noticed the rates creeping up on a ticket I want, that sometimes Hotwire will still have the lower price available when the other sites (including the airline directly) don’t show it. However, with Hotwire the price you pay for the cheaper tickets is that you don’t know who or when you’re flying out: just the day. (Normally though, I know what airlines serve that city from here, and I know roughly when they fly into that city, so this isn’t a problem for me.)
Keep an eye for package deals. If you know you’ll be needing a car and/or hotel at your destination, there are times when you can save some $$$ this way (but not always). It depends on who’s running promotional deals with each other.
Write down any and all confirmation numbers, and note down whose confirmation number it is. (Is it the airline’s number, the travel agency’s number, etc.)
Other tips/tricks involve doing some reasearch on the flights to the cities you tend to fly into the most. When do the business travellers normally fly there, if they go there at all? Do those other cities serve as hubs for transfers to popular vacation spots, and when do people want to go to those vacation spots? (For instance: if I fly into Charlotte, NC, when I know people are travelling to Florida, my flight will be fuller than normal no matter what time of day/week. But, it doesn’t seem to affect my flights into Atlanta during the same time frame.) Is there something happening in the city you fly to, or in a city that’s served mostly by the hub you are going into? (Super Bowl, major industry confererence, etc., etc.)
I wish I could remember where, but some sites will show a small history for that particular flight: the amount of time it’s ‘on-time’, how full it usually is, etc. That can help with planning transfers.
(And a free-tid bit: AirTran is usually cheap, but they’ve been lousy in my experience for getting me to where I want to be on-time. On the other hand, when they screw up, they’ve always made good.)
Whew. Didn’t mean to write a book there, but…
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Go to Travelocity.com and sign up for their “fare watcher” service. It will inform you of price fluxuations between 5 sets of cities (it sends you emails when the price goes down, for example). Check several websites (qixo, orbitz, expedia, travelocity, cheaptickets). Many times, I’ve found a ticket for the right price but not the right time on one, and then gone to another site and found the same ticket for the right flight times for the lower price. If you have a low-cost airline servicing your city (for example, Frontier serves Denver and Southwest Airlines serves many cities), check their website frequently; many of them have weekend specials and you can also get fare updates. Get familiar with which airlines go between your city and where you want to go.
Hotwire can work very well if you’re flexible on times and don’t care which airline you use. However, if you have any time restrictions, it’s best not to do it. Also, it isn’t much of a deal more than 2 weeks or so before you want to fly - it’s much better for last-minute travel.
Many airlines do fare sales on Tuesday or Wednesday. I get emails from (I think) 3 airlines that come on Tuesday or Wednesday, advertising their upcoming sales. Another good website that will help you search for good package deals as well as airlines is smarterliving.com. That’s a good site for last-minute deals, too.
If you fly on a Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, or Saturday, you’re much more likely to get a good deal than if you fly on Friday, Sunday, or Monday (they will bump up prices for people who just want to fly on the weekends). Though sometimes you can get a good deal on any day of the week. Just make sure to shop around and keep your options open. If you see a really good deal (after doing some research), chances are it won’t get much cheaper the closer you get to when you want to fly. For instance, if tickets between the two cities are normally $300, and you see a $200 fare, you probably won’t find a fare lower than that.
Good luck!
I’ve found that you need to check different web sites to see who sells the seats the cheapest. My own scheme is to try to fly with as many stops and plane changes as possible. Reason: more stops = shorter flights = less fuel needed on airplane = reduced value to potential terrorists = statistically safer trip for you. Also, I like to go so far as select seats to get an idea of how full the plane looks like it will be before actually booking. More empy seats at time of booking = bigger chance of nobody sitting next to you, also the emptier the plane the faster you can get out of it.
Thanks for the information so far.
We’re going from South Carolina to Sydney, Australia. I found that if I book my flight from here to LA separately from the flight from LA to Sydney (with an 8 hour break between landing at LAX and taking off), that it’s $200 cheaper per person. Is there any reason not to do it this way? I guess we’d probably have to get our luggage in LA and recheck it. Kind of a pain, but for the money, I think it would be worth it.
Also, I found that if we fly Air China instead of Qantas, Air New Zealand, or United, that it’s significantly cheaper. My husband said that the Air China plane was probably just a Qantas plane that stops in Beijing…is that true? Why would the Air China flight be so much less expensive (about $400 less per person)?
For further clarification, we have no time restraints, can fly any day between late August and the end of September, and don’t mind many stopovers. We’re flying one-way, so that’s not helping us on price.
I’d pay the $200. If the first flight is heavily delayed, then you miss your connection with no right to any compensation (although they’d probably rebook you without a problem).
It’s possible, if Air China happened to be operating a special deal which includes codeshares. Check Qantas’ website, and you should be able to find out from the timetables.