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Finding Discount Airfares for Business Travel or Leisure | Home

There are many sites and services that can help you cut the cost of air travel. Here are some tips for finding low air fares to anywhere. Finding low air fares online takes work, but the effort is worth it. Be it an effort to arrange a summer trip to Europe or the Andes Mountains or finding cheap air fares from some cold place to some warm place, the Web is filled with sites offering deals, good deals and great deals.

The deals are there for a reason. You have to fly under someone else's rules. You may fly to Honolulu via Salt Lake City, Wausau, Wis., and Grand Junction, Colo. Fares to Paris or London in the winter are cheap. But that's because you're going to Paris or London when it's cold and often nasty. Nonetheless, these strategies can improve your odds of becoming a savvy traveler before you've even left home.

Start with a search on the web for bargain air fares

This means hitting the big sites that offer low air fares from all over the Web, including Orbitz, Expedia and Travelocity. These should give you a general feel for the kinds of deals available. It's worth trying the following ideas to make sure you've found the best deal:

Use consolidators

Offline or online, consolidators have long been a good source for travel deals. Some of the top consolidator Web sites include Hotwire, Cheap Tickets, Onetravel and Travelhub. Online travel agents Travelocity and Expedia also include them in their inventory, but they don't specialize in consolidator fares.

Finding low air fares: Searching recently for a roundtrip, midweek Seattle-to-Honolulu ticket, the three best deals I found at these sites were: Recent fares to Honolulu Site Cost Layovers? Hotwire $319 1 Cheaptickets $365 None Travelhub $374 None Hotwire hides the exact itinerary and airline until after you've bought the ticket, but there is a limit of three hours for any layovers. CheapTickets' deal was on Continental, while the Travelhub flight was on Northwest.

Note that consolidator fares sometimes carry hefty cancellation fees - up to 50% of the ticket price, so be sure to read the fine print before you buy low air fares.

Use travel search engine for bargain air fares One of the better tools for maximizing your Web searches is a farefinder, or travel search engine. SideStep is one downloadable search agent that scours more than 130 travel sites with the push of one button. Download it, and it will pop up on your screen when you're on other travel sites, allowing you to simultaneously search both the site you're visiting and the many sites explored automatically by SideStep. On the Seattle-Honolulu flight, Sidestep found a bargain air fares of $359 on Northwest Airlines. QIXO requires no download, and it searches almost 30 different airline and travel sites. It found a deal for $354 on the same nonstop Northwest flight. Don't overlook airline sites, especially Southwest Don't forget the major airlines' own sites.

Not only do they often have low air fares, but you can avoid forfeiting frequent flier miles as you do on Priceline and other travel sites. You also avoid their fees: Orbitz charges you $5 for tickets on airlines that pay it commissions and $10 for tickets on airlines that don't, for example. And not all airlines sell tickets on major sites like Expedia and Orbitz -- notably, budget carrier Southwest Airlines. Know when to fly You can reap big savings by flying on low-demand days of the week.

More tips for finding low air fares

• For a weekend trip, flying Thursday and Sunday is reportedly cheaper than Friday and Monday.
• For trips of any length, Hotwire recommends flying midweek, Tuesday-Thursday. The time of day you fly also can dramatically change the price of a ticket.
• By selecting "anytime" when given the option for your preferred departure time, you'll increase your odds of finding the best deals.
• Fly into less popular airports Like flying midweek, flying into alternative airports can increase your savings.
• Heading to San Francisco? Think Oakland or San Jose."
• Go paperless. Some airlines have started assessing a fee to passengers who choose a paper ticket when an e-ticket is available.
• The fees vary by airline, but Northwest charges $25, Delta charges $20 and American charges $25. Note that Northwest and American upped these fees late last year from $10. Also, if you're buying from a site such as Cheaptickets, you'll pay $20 or more to have a paper ticket delivered -- on top of the airline's fee.

Use local carriers for cheap air fares

While traveling to Europe, consider some of the European airlines and travel sites for the last leg of your trip, rather than trying to make it all the way to your destination city on the same U.S.-based airline. A Seattle-to-Rome roundtrip ticket would have cost me $655 - excluding fees, and including one layover in Philadelphia- on US Airways. But by flying to London and then booking a London-Rome ticket at eBookers, I saved about $130 before fees. The flight to London was $410 on British Airways; the London-Rome ticket cost $116. eBookers.com allows you to display results in U.S. dollars, making it easier to compare prices with U.S. carriers. Europe By Air offers $99 one-way tickets around Europe, making it easy to set up a multi-stop trip.

Try auctions for low air fares

Bidding for flights at SkyAuction starts at just $1. You're usually not buying a ticket for a specific flight. You have to arrange that with the airline, so you might not be able to use the tickets when you'd hoped. The more widely known bidding site is Priceline.com, where itineraries and airlines remain hidden until after you've bought. Should your bid be accepted at Priceline, your credit card will be billed automatically, making it difficult to do any pre-purchase comparisons of Priceline low air fares with those found on other sites. One way to improve upon this is to do your research first, then try bidding at 25%-30% off the low air fares you've found elsewhere online. Or, for even more informed bidding, troll message boards such as BiddingForTravel.com, where members post information about bids that were accepted. Flyertalk, SmarterLiving and Frommer's message boards are also good for sniffing out the best deals -- and the best customer service.

Neither of these services is for worldwide travel. Instead, they each offer deals between the continental United States and Europe, Hawaii and the Caribbean. AirTech also offers passes to Mexico. And, as AirTech's site notes, these are not guaranteed to get you to specific cities, just regions. Take advantage of special discounts Are you a student, senior citizen or traveling with a large party? Then you likely qualify for special deals.

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