Gettin’ Carried Away

When it comes to traveling, I’ve made it my mission in life to find affordable airfare. After spending many years scouring travel company websites and the direct sites of various airlines, I’ve come up with five tips that I believe will save you money on your next flight.

1. Look for promotional codes.

Rather than seeing customers book flights through travel agencies or travel search engines, airlines are trying to drive traffic to their own websites by offering promotional codes. Obtaining these codes requires you to be somewhat of an insider. It’s not hard to do that. Just sign up for a given airline’s frequent flyer mile programs or their e-mailed newsletters. Another tip: Airfarewatchdog posts promo codes on its blog as soon as they find them.

2. Search for fares several times throughout the day.

Just as airfare changes from day to day and week to week, it also goes up and down in a matter of hours. I once booked a flight to London for $510 round trip. When I looked at the other fares later that night, I found the same exact flight for $480 round trip. Of course, there is no way to predict when the price of a flight will fall (or increase). However, my advice is to check the price status every half hour. If there’s no change within a 3-5 hour window, go ahead and book the flight. Also, keep in mind that, as seats sell, the price will increase. It only makes sense that an airline will charge more money once there is only a handful of seats left.

3. Travel during the week.

Most of the time, it is cheaper to travel on a weekday. If you would like to be on holiday for the weekend, it might be wise to book your departing flight on a Thursday and your returning flight on a Monday. While looking for flights to New Orleans for the trip I took almost a month ago, my friends wanted to go from Thursday to Monday. Not wanting to miss two days of work, I wanted to return on Sunday. However, that would have cost me a full $80 more than if I stayed with my friends another day and returned on Monday. Needless to say, I opted to stay in New Orleans and miss another day of work.

4. Don’t rule out traveling on the weekends or during the holidays.

Airlines are competitive. It is a business, after all. Many of them will sometimes offer unadvertised sales during holiday weekends: Memorial Day, Labor Day, Martin Luther King Day, etc. They probably figure that most people will be barbecuing, taking trips to the movies or spending more time with family. A great example of stumbling across an unadvertised sale is the holiday I booked to London during the week of Thanksgiving. Airlines probably think that most of us here in America will be traveling within the U.S. if we are going to fly anywhere to be with family. I believe that is why I was able to find airfare to the UK for about 25% less than the usual fare. It was a little over $400, round trip, during the week of Thanksgiving. What a steal!

5. Be flexible about your travel dates.

If you are willing to adjust the dates of your travel days by a day or two, you could save $100+ or more! This is when you want to use the services of online travel agencies such as Travelocity, Expedia, Orbitz and Cheapair to name a few. These sites show you the lowest fares from various airlines over a certain period of days. This also saves you the time of searching and researching different days on an airline’s direct website.