The Art Of Cheap Flights

During the past twelve months, I've visited Africa, Asia and Central America. Along the way, I've made some big mistakes. I've had two knives and a bottle of tequila seized because they were in my carry on, and not on the same trip. I way overpaid for a hotel in Hanoi, because I messed up the conversion rate. My biggest mistake was not having a frequent flyer account.

By simply registering, I would now have enough miles racked up for two domestic return tickets anywhere in continental North America, or be well on my way to enough mileage for another big trip almost anywhere. In addition, I would have "status", meaning that I could access airport lounges and get free wifi, snacks and beverages from many airports around the globe while waiting for my flight.

But between the screwups, I have learned a couple of things along the way about searching for cheap flights. When selecting flights I have a long term vision, so if you have to be in Bangkok in three days this might not be the best strategy, but then again it might help.

My first move is to go to farecompare.com. The reason that I love this site is that if you enter a city and then click on the date a calender pops up. The beauty of this calender is that it displays possible prices on a potential date and you can scroll through the calender. This allows you to see when the peak and low fares are for any given destination.

However if you search Farecompare, be sure to click unselect all in the search parameters, otherwise a whole bunch of browsers will open to each site being searched. It is really quite annoying.

The second move is to take the itinerary based on the cheapest flight dates from farecompare.com and stroll on over to cheapoair.com. In a recent example, I searched a flight to Damascus, Syria using the same cheap dates. Farecompare quoted $1732 US and Cheapoair quoted $1361 US. All fares quoted are final cost.

Personally, I don't like to book online, so I take the cheap itinerary in to my travel agent. If she can match it within $50, I book it. And of course she can, because we are all accessing the same information

And if you're willing to travel on a more short term whim, then I would suggest that you sign up for email alerts at http://www.airfarewatchdog.com/ . The reason that I love this site is that the alerts are specific to where you live. I live in Toronto, and a cheap fare from Wichita to Phoenix is of no interest to me.

Happy Travels

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