Travel Tips

Airfarewatchdog Top Ten Tips

1. Don't assume that Travelocity, Orbitz, Expedia, and Sidestep all have the same fares. They don't. Check all the online agencies by using multi-site search engine like Kayak and Booking Buddy. Most online travel agencies exclude smaller discount airlines such as Virgin America (recently added to Travelocity) and Orbitz only recently added JetBlue.

2. Search airline sites individually. Airlines have 'private' sales, reserving best fares for their own sites. Except for Southwest, (sells fares on its own site exclusively), most airlines that do this are smaller domestic airlines or large international carriers. Alaska, Air Canada, Air New Zealand, Jetblue, Malaysia, Frontier, Qantas, Singapore, SAS, Virgin America, and others are using this strategy. Spirit Airlines frequently has one cent, one dollar and other crazy low fares on its site only. Low Cost Carriers like SkyBus and Allegiant Air usually don't share their fare data with third-party sites at all, although Jetblue fares are included in Travelocity, Cheapair.com and Kayak searches now, and USA3000 fares in Sidestep.

3. Try a flexible fare search. You can save money by adjusting your travel dates, often by just a day or two. Travelocity is one of the best options because it searches 330 days ahead; although it no longer includes international flights (limited by its exclusion of Southwest and several small domestic carriers such as SkyBus and Allegiant Air). Try Travelocity's Asian affiliate Zuji.com for international flexible searches listed in US dollars (they also show business and first class flexible date results). Cheapair.com has a flexible search at 330 days but charges $10 per booking vs. Travelocity's $5. Orbitz has a limited flexible date function that searches a span of only 30 days, and Expedia does flexible search only between a few dozen major US cities. Sidestep.com and the other major sites have no flexible search capability. Increasingly, individual airline sites are improving their flexible date search functions. American, AerLingus, Air New Zealand, Spirit, and USA3000 all have decent ones and Southwest has a very good one.

4. Combine weekend fares. Last minute weekend fares are great deals, but people don't realize they can construct itineraries by combining two of these fares. Let's say you want to fly from Boston to San Antonio next weekend, and you've signed up for all the weekly newsletters alerting you of these deals but there's no Boston/San Antonio deals listed. However, if there's a Boston to Atlanta fare for $128 round-trip, and an Atlanta to San Antonio fare for $108 round-trip, then there is indeed a Boston/San Antonio fare as well. Buy two separate fares. You can combine such fares on two different airlines, but leave time in between connecting flights in case there's a delay.

5. Sign up for Ding fares, AA DealFinder, and Frontier's fare alerts. Southwest offers daily 'Ding' deals that pop up on your computer announced by an audible 'ding' that save a few dollars off already low fares. Frontier is sending similar fares by email. In both cases, the fares expire the same day they’re announced but they're often good for travel far into the future. American has begun offering discounts of 10-25% when you sign up for its DealFinder feature and enter a promo code on its site. It's a good idea to register with the airlines' newsletters because they often send out special deals and promo codes. Alaska sends 20% discount 'insider' promos to its subscribers on a regular basis.

6. Buy hotel + air packages. Lastminute.com is the online leader in this field. Travelocity owns Lastminute, so you'll often see 'TotalTrip' options on Travelocity just above the airfare-only search results. This works best only if there are two of you traveling since the hotels are based on double occupancy. They're especially useful for last minute travel.

7. Some of the best fares appear on Saturdays. One, airlines can only change fares once a day (around 5 PM) on Saturday and Sunday. So, if you're an airline fare analyst, and you're trying to sneak one over your competition, you'll do it with the last fare change on Friday night, which appears in Travelocity, Orbitz, etc. around 1 or 2 AM on Saturday morning. Your competition can't match your sale fares until the 5 PM Saturday update (those fares appear in Travelocity around 8 or 9 PM that night).

8. Check fares often. Airlines can update domestic fares three times a day during the week, and once on Saturday and Sunday. And another little tip: be sure to clear the 'cookies' on your internet browser (on Explorer you do this under the 'tools' menu and 'internet options' sub menu). If a fare changes between two separate searches done over time on the same route, some fare search engines may return the results you viewed earlier rather than the new, lower results.

9. Combine two separate fares rather than buying one fare. It's often cheaper to buy two fares rather than one. Let's say you're flying from New York to Eleuthera in the Bahamas. Check on one of the big sites like Expedia or Orbitz for a single fare (for example, JFK to Governor's Harbor, Bahamas) and then do two separate searches (JFK to Nassau and Nassau to Governor's Harbor). Since JetBlue flies JFK/Nassau you'll want to check JetBlue.com separately). Chances are the two-fare strategy will save you a lot of cash. This fare trick also works for flights to Europe (fly into London or Manchester, UK on one fare and then hop on a discount European airline to reach your final destination) and Asia. To search route possibilities on these discounters, check out the Airfarewatchdog route maps page.

10. Buy tickets on an airline that will refund the difference if a fare goes down. If you ask for it you can get a refund for the difference, providing of course that you don't change the times or dates of your flights; but it's a little-known fact that some airlines charge a 'service' or 'administrative' fee as high as $100 for domestic fares or from $200-$300 on international ones, wiping out any savings. And some airlines won't refund the difference at all, like Air Canada. United and Alaska, however, will give you the entire fare difference without extracting a fee, as long as you accept the reimbursement in the form of a voucher good for future travel. Northwest charges just $25, for both domestic and international fares. US Airways, Continental, American and Delta extract the $100-$300 fees; Southwest gives you a credit for a future flight without charging a fee. Even on these less generous airlines, however, we've heard of plenty of instances where a polite entreaty will get you a full fare difference refund without the penalties, so it's worth try.