Top 10 Tips for getting the Cheapest Airfare
#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. Use Travelocity to find airfares for flexible travel dates. (Click "flexible dates".) Kayak and Orbitz also have flexible date finders but they're not quite as, er, flexible.
This is our #1 tip for getting the best airfare! Ignore it at your peril.
Sample fares we just checked1:
$444 - Insist on leaving on the 5th and returning on the 7th
$333 -Willing to leave on the 5th and return on the 8th
For international flights the difference can be even greater.
Here's more on flexible dates.
#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.
Sample fares we just checked2:
$444 - Booked 5 days in advance
$261 - Booked 19 days in advance
$192 - Booked 26 days in advance
#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 numerous searches and the return flight was never any cheaper if I set it for Sunday or later.
#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.
Sample fares we just checked3:
$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
#5 Using neighboring airports sometimes gets you cheaper airfares.
Several times we've 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 our destination in New York City. Once we saved $200 by flying into Philadelphia instead of Atlantic City, then took a $6 train ride (1.5 hours) to Atlantic City. Kayak, Travelocity and Orbitz can automatically search neighboring airports for you. Kayak is nice by giving you a nice list of the prices for each airport it finds (rather than dumping all the results together.
#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. We just checked Austin to San Jose, and round trip was $274, while one-way was over $700! On international flights the savings can be even bigger. Tokyo to Las Vegas in 2007: round trip $930, one-way $1720.
#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.
#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 most search engines. Momondo and Hotwire are the only major engines that don't offer this feature.
#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." See more on international fares.
#10 Use the proper website to search for airfare
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