3 secrets to get the lowest airfare online
May 11, 2014
3 secrets to get the lowest airfare online
Holidays are on the way, and this means vacations,
reunions and long weekends are just around the corner. I'm betting that
whatever adventure you have planned, it's probably going to involve a flight to
get there.
Despite the rigmarole with checking baggage, parking your
car and going through security, flying is still faster and more convenient for
long distances than any other type of transportation. Unfortunately, it's also
one of the most expensive and the hardest to make sure that you get a deal.
Still, with a few insider tricks you can get substantial
savings on your airline tickets - even tickets you've already bought.
That can free up spending money for your trip, or you can
put it toward expenses after you get back from vacation.
Ready? Set? Save!
1. KNOW THE BEST ONLINE PLACES TO LOOK
If you're just looking at prices on an airline's site,
you're missing the bigger picture. You might save more flying a different date
or with another airline entirely. Most airline sites don't make it easy to
search multiple dates at once - and none of them includes other airlines'
prices.
Widen your possibilities with a site like Matrix. You can
search for tickets on multiple departure and arrival dates to see what day has
the best deal. Or you can just see a calendar of the lowest fares around a
certain date. Naturally, Matrix pulls from multiple airlines for easier
comparison.
Before you buy, though, you should also fire up a site
like Airfare Watchdog. This scours airline sites for deals and pulls them into
one easy-to-find place. You might spot a deal you wouldn't have seen otherwise.
I do have one caution about buying the cheapest tickets,
though. Many airlines have additional fees that don't show in the price of a
ticket. The cost of checking baggage is an often-overlooked example. You might
find that more expensive tickets are actually less expensive when you've taken
other fees into account.
2. BUY AT THE RIGHT TIME
I'm sure you've heard that the day of the week and time
of day you buy tickets can make a difference. Well, you heard right. Of course,
you want to start looking eight weeks before the day you want to leave. That's
when airlines start dropping the prices.
Tuesday around noon is a good time to find deals as
airlines try match deals other airlines posted Monday evening. Peter Greenberg
at CBS News suggests 1 a.m. on Wednesday to snatch up deals that weren't taken
on Tuesday. If there aren't many deals going on, researchers from Texas A&M
say weekends are the best time to book a leisure trip.
The time you travel can also make a difference. Aim for
weekdays in the early mornings and evenings to get the cheapest prices. That's a lot of things to take into account.
So instead, you can also head over to Kayak. When you run a search for tickets,
you'll see a Price Trend box in the left-hand column. It tells you whether to
buy or wait and Kayak's confidence level. If you want more information about
how it made its decision, you can click the box with the lowercase
"i".
I do have to say though that while saving money is good,
sometimes the savings just aren't worth the extra agony. Flying at 2 a.m.? No
thanks. That's why I'd check out the site Hipmunk to quickly find flights with
the best balance of cost and convenience.
3. KEEP WATCHING THE PRICES
Just because you got a low ticket price doesn't mean it
won't go lower. The good news is many airlines will refund you the difference
if the price drops a certain amount after you buy.
But who has time to look up ticket prices every day?
That's where Yapta can help. It keeps an eye on your tickets and alerts you
when the price drops.
Yapta claims annual savings of $334 per user, which means
you can put that money toward a better hotel, a few nice dinners or just put it
back in your bank account for life after your trip.
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