Using these fundamental tips and a promo code from coupon site RetailMeNot (don't forget to check co

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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.
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 on 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.) Five Best Travel Sites for Cheap Tickets paris cheap hotels Five Best Travel Sites for Cheap Tickets Five Best Travel Sites for Cheap Tickets
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 paris cheap hotels than others, keep in mind prices are often set depending on how competitive a route is.
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, paris cheap hotels 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 paris cheap hotels months like January and October yields 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. Fly Out of Regional Airports to Save Money and Hassle Fly Out of Regional Airports to Save Money and Hassle paris cheap hotels Fly Out of Regional Airports to Save Money and Has
When planning a flight most people focus on flying paris cheap hotels out of major airports, hopping from one… Read more Read on Expert Predictions on When to Get the Best Airfare paris cheap hotels Expert Predictions on When to Get the Best Airfare Expert Predictions on When to Get the Best Airfare
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.
Earlier, we mentioned Bing Travel as a good way to gather information. paris cheap hotels 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 paris cheap hotels 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 paris cheap hotels app —its 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 paris cheap hotels where exactly the best bang for your buck is.
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 .
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 paris cheap hotels main hubs, so it'd be worth checking in to see which airline is based nearest you.
Sometimes it pays to plot your route manually—like if you have a layover or if it's 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 paris cheap hotels 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 paris cheap hotels $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.
Another good option is to consider paris cheap hotels 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 paris cheap hotels 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 most major budget airlines in the world.
The key is to know these discount airlines and their routes well. Discount paris cheap hotels 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 paris cheap hotels 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 paris cheap hotels 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 paris cheap hotels → Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia → London, UK on AirAsia for $252 including paris cheap hotels 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.
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 paris cheap hotels 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?
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