How do you fly for cheap?

[diddyeinstein]

I'm going to visit my girl in Portland, OR around Thanksgiving and have been trying to find decently priced airfare. I understand that tickets are going to be more expensive around the holidays so I'm planning on flying in the Monday before and leaving the Monday after to try to get around this.

Basically, I suck at the interwebs and was wondering if you could refer me to any sites that ya'll use for booking cheap(er) flights. So far ~$300 seems like the cheapest, but I think I should be able to find something better.

[highlife]

kayak.com is the best by far.

[punkass]

standard procedure for me:

check kayak, sidestep, orbitz, travelocity, expedia, southwest. If you find a cheap flight, go to the airline's website to see if it's there or cheaper. Repeat this every couple of days to see if there's any movement.

[goodgrief]

If you fly only once or twice a year, there isn't much you can do other than search, search, search. Most likely to get good results late Tuesday/early Wednesday. Never wait until less than 7 days before a flight. Never buy (unless the deal is exceptional) more than 8 weeks before the flight.

Most of us who fly for super cheap/free spend a lot of time working the system, and I don't want to bore you numb by making this post too long, there are entire sites devoted to this.

But here's one example: Sign up for one of those credit card offers where they give you enough miles to get a free flight once you buy a smallish amount of stuff on the credit card. Delta had an association with Amex to give 22,500 SkyMiles to new Amex card holders, plus the first year's fee was free. (This offer comes around regularly, so look out for it.) My husband and I each applied for our own card. We charged enough on each card to get 2,500 more miles apiece. Well, at 25K miles, you get a free round trip ticket anywhere in the domestic U.S. or Canada. So we went to a Canadian destination and only paid taxes, something like $35 a piece. Then we canceled the Amex cards so we wouldn't get dinged for a fee the second year, as we refuse to pay fees to have credit cards -- too many out there for free. It worked beautifully.

Even if you think Delta sucks, they have partners. Our free flight from this offer ended up being on Continental and went very smoothly.


Oh, and one more thing, if your flight plans are flexible, always volunteer for the bump if they will give you a voucher for $300-plus. If they are just giving you free tickets, maybe don't bother, since they are too hard to use before they expire.

[Atomic]

farecast.com "Search flights for accurate airfare predictions" Know when to buy, know when to fly.

I've used this website in the past and it was fairly accurate in that the price of the ticket I was going to buy was predicted to drop a bit an dit actualy did.

Also sign up for SWA's Ding.

Regarding the above post - sometimes the the bank that issued the airline affinity card will waive the fee if you've charged a decent amount and you call to ask the fee to be waived or else you'll cancel the card.

[goodgrief]

True dat...but I'm a wicked, wicked person and I prefer to cancel the card and then move on to a new credit card with a new offer.

[ QUOTE ]
Regarding the above post - sometimes the the bank that issued the airline affinity card will waive the fee if you've charged a decent amount and you call to ask the fee to be waived or else you'll cancel the card.

[/ QUOTE ]