By Erica Ho

The Frequent Flier's Guide to Finding Cheap Airfare

The Frequent Flier's Guide to Finding Cheap Airfare Summer's just around the corner, and if you haven't made your travel plans yet, now's the time. Our guide to finding cheap airfare will have you whistling all the way to Peru—and saving you money all year-round.

Photo by caribb.

Get ready to arm yourself with your web browser and a handful of the best travel sites. In this guide, I'll lay out the basics of buying airline tickets, highlight some fancy tools to help you find the right time to buy, help you set up a few passive tools for making the best deals come to your doorstep, and in general highlight how I regularly go about finding great deals of airfare. (I fly roughly once a month, and using these strategies have secured tickets so inexpensive all I had to do was pay the tax on what the price of the ticket would have been.)

It's impossible to know what a deal is if you don't know the flight market. Before you get started hunting, you should have an idea of what places you are interested in traveling to, and a general time frame in which you are interested in doing it in. Search engines like Bing Travel and Kayak offer some handy tools, which we'll cover in a bit, for scoping this information out. While it may seem strange that some routes are more expensive than others, keep in mind prices are often set depending on how competitive a route is.

Learn the Basics of Buying Airfare

These basic travel tips for cheap airfare are pretty common, but they're also true and bear repeating. Consider alternate dates and regional airports, travel during off-peak season, and plan ahead as soon as you can (with a two weeks' minimum when you can). Prices rise during vacation times, such as the summer and the holiday season. Traveling in off-peak months like January and October yield better fares. If you're planning a trip in the summer, aim for the early or late summer months instead of the middle of July.

Using these fundamental tips and a promo code from coupon site RetailMeNot (don't forget to check coupon sites as an easy way to save money!), I was able, for example, to book a roundtrip fare from Los Angeles to Mexico City in late January for $167 including tax. On average, fares for this route can easily range from $300-350. That's nearly 50 percent in savings.

Use Graphs To Your Advantage

The Frequent Flier's Guide to Finding Cheap Airfare
Earlier we mentioned Bing Travel as a good way to gather information. Bing offers a handy graph for figuring out the average price for a route, when to travel and for how long. The web site also allows you to compare up to five routes at the same time, and shows if fares are rising or dropping so you can easily make a decision on when to buy.

Kayak's Buzz feature offers something similar. (If you have an iPhone, try out Kayak's free iPhone app—it's Buzz feature is strangely even better than the web-based version.) Buzz will let you check the average best prices compared to the absolute best prices for the next few months for specific routes, and help you pinpoint where exactly the best bang for your buck is.

Set Up Instant Email Notifications

It may not always be friendly to your uncluttered inbox, but a good source of deals comes straight from the companies themselves, and sometimes the best deals can be found here. Using a good organizational system like personalized filters in Gmail or a separate email inbox will keep emails from cluttering up your inbox. Link it to a good email notification tool like previously mentioned Scott's Gmail Alert, and you'll get instant notification of promotions and price changes. It's also worth signing up for sites that offer fare alerts, such as Kayak and Travelocity.

The Frequent Flier's Guide to Finding Cheap Airfare

Also, remember: Not every plane gets filled out to capacity, and airlines often offer last-minute fares at reduced prices to sell these unsold seats. For example, Continental and American Airlines send out weekly last-minute reduced-fare emails. Often, but not always, these routes originate from the airline's main hubs, so it'd be worth checking in to see which airline is based nearest you.

Plot Your Route Manually

Sometimes it pays to plot your route manually—like if you have a layover or if its cheaper to fly out of certain airports. While it's easy to let a search engine like Kayak do all the work for you, you can save hundreds of dollars doing it yourself. A friend was interested in flying to Melbourne, Australia (MEL) from Fort Lauderdale (FLL) later this September. He ran a search and came up with $1,271 for his flight with a stop in Los Angeles (LAX). A flight to Melbourne from Los Angeles, on the other hand, came up for $677. For the month of September, a flight from Fort Lauderdale to Los Angeles is averaging around $250-350. If he books it manually and pays the high-end $350 in addition to the $677 flight to Melbourne, the total cost for the trip comes out to $1,027—over $200 less than if he went through a search engine.

If you use this method, it's extremely important that you leave enough time between flights for an adequate layover. There are a few risks with this method in not making your connecting flight, but if you can plan it correctly and carefully, you can save a lot of money.

Skip the Major Airlines, Fly Budget

Another good option is to consider low-cost budget carriers, like JetBlue or Mexican airline Volaris. While budget carriers sometimes charge extra for things like food, with so many US airlines cost-cutting and ramping up fees (with arguable service), you're not really missing out on anything. (It's worth it to point out that some discount airlines will start to charge for things that aren't common practice soon, like for carry-on baggage on Spirit Airlines, and to use the restroom on Ryanair.) Search engines like Kayak or Sidestep, while a good resource for the domestic market, can miss out on discount airlines abroad. Community-contributed travel guide Wikitravel has a good article that covers nearly most major budget airlines in the world.

The Frequent Flier's Guide to Finding Cheap Airfare The key is to know these discount airlines and their routes well. Discount Malaysian-based airline AirAsia gives out free seats biannually, while discount European airlines RyanAir and EasyJet have their biggest sales during the off-peak season. Airline emails still remain a good source for knowing when a sale occurs. I've grabbed a one-way ticket from Los Angeles to Guadalajara, Mexico for $1 plus tax on Mexican discount airline Volaris. (I actually saw it on Twitter first—we'll go more in-depth on utilizing Twitter later.) Some deals may be one-way only, but the sheer discount of the one-way may still undercut the cost of a normal roundtrip fare significantly.

Last year using a combination of email alerts and buying nearly a year in advance, I booked Beijing, China (with one stop) → Bangkok, Thailand → Penang, Malaysia → Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia → London, UK on AirAsia for $252 including tax. If I was to buy those same exact dates on the same airline today, it would cost me $516. That same multi-destination route plugged into Sidestep yields $1,741 for the cheapest fare.

Use Twitter For Last-Minute Steals

The Frequent Flier's Guide to Finding Cheap Airfare
Twitter is an easy, efficient way to keep track of current airline promotions. Not only do you often receive notice before the marketing email lands in your inbox, but some companies use Twitter to give exclusive discounts. JetBlue, for instance, offers limited fares every Tuesday at @jetbluecheeps. As an example, they offered a $10 one-way flight to New York (JFK) from Boston (BOS) not too long ago. After all, what's a better time for last-minute getaways than during the summer?

Airline Fees Undermine the Bottom-Line Cost

The Frequent Flier's Guide to Finding Cheap Airfare
The days where all-inclusive service on airline travel has long passed, so picking the right airline is crucial. Want to check in that bag? Want more legroom? That snack on United is going to cost you… even on an international flight. If you have particular needs, you'll need to check with your airline ahead of time, before you easily spend an extra $50 checking in a bag for a roundtrip trip. Sidestep has a decent chart of current airline fees and we covered this topic a few months ago. The list isn't all-inclusive nor the most current, but it's a good starting point. Keep in mind that Delta and United also recently extended their $10-$30 holiday surcharges to the 2010 holiday season as well. To avoid booking fees, always book directly with the airline.

International travelers: when purchasing a fare from an airline based abroad, stick to a credit card that doesn't charge a foreign currency conversion fee, even if the price is quoted in dollars. Some fares bought online can and sometimes will be processed in the originating currency. In some instances, British Airways and Singapore Airlines customers later found a surprise foreign currency conversion fee from their bank. It's not so bad—unless it's 3 percent of two $850 tickets. Capital One is often known as the traveler's credit card because they are one of the few major banks left that does not charge any fees, although claims have been made they make it up with a slightly less favorable foreign currency rate.

After You've Bought Your Ticket, Track Your Ticket for a Refund

Even after you've booked your ticket, don't think your work is done. Some airlines will refund or credit you the difference if the price drops. Flight-monitoring site Yapta keeps an eye on price drops and alerts you if the price falls below the price you bought it for so you can contact the airline to get a refund. Currently Yapta only tracks twelve US airlines. Some airlines may charge a rebooking fee, so Yapta only notifies you if the price drop is greater than the booking fee for that particular airline.

And Then There's You

I've offered my favorite methods of finding and securing great deals, but that doesn't mean I've exhausted the issue. If you've got any tips on how you snag the best deals, share your experience below in the comments. In the words of Douglas Adams, just bring your towel.

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