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Get cheaper fares by being
flexible with your travel dates
If you insist on traveling on specific days, you'll pay a lot more for
airfares. But if you're flexible about exactly when you
leave and return, you can get much better deals. This is our #1 tip
for getting the cheapest airfare! It bears repeating:
Be flexible, pay less.
Sample fares we just checked:
- $444 - Leave on the 5th and insist on returning
on the 7th
- $333 - Leave on the 5th and willing to return on
the 8th
Use the services below to get great
deals when your travel plans have some leeway.
Search
Engines
Most search engines now do flexible-date searches,
like Kayak and Travelocity.
Tell them where you want to go and they'll show you the best price by
date.
Weekly Netfares
Every Wednesday the airlines offer deep discounts on
undersold flights for that weekend. Downsides: You usually have to
leave on Thu/Fri/Sat and return on Sun/Mon, and your choices of cities
are limited. As I'm typing this, the only trips available from
Austin are Denver ($147) or El Paso ($87), but those are excellent
deals for roundtrip airfare.
Rather than having to visit each airline website separately,
just go to Travelzoo or Best Fares and choose the city you want to travel
from. Then they'll show you all the deals from all the major airlines.
Many of these are decidedly cheap.
Of course, you can sign up at the individual airlines' sites
if you prefer. Here are the links:
American
Continental Northwest Southwest United
Fare Alerts
by email
Lots of sites offer a "Fare Alert" service,
sending you an email about low fares between particular cities.
But you only need one, and Kayak's
fare alert service is pretty good.
Portals /
Home Pages
My
Yahoo gives you a free personalized start page with news,
sports, weather -- and the current cheapest fares to any pairs of
cities you choose. Very handy, especially if you already check your My
Yahoo page on occasion for the other news and info anyway.
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 Thanks
for visiting, and I hope you liked the site.
I'll leave you with a couple of hand-picked
ads.
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Find
which travel days are cheapest
If your travel dates are flexible, just enter
the cities you're flying between and let
Travelocity find which days are cheapest to fly.
Being flexible with your travel dates is our #1 tip
for getting the cheapest airfare.
Travelocity.com
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If you liked my guide to Cheap
Airfare, you might like some of my other sites:
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Summarized Tips for
getting the cheapest airfare
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Be flexible with your travel dates (click
"flexible dates" at Kayak or Travelocity,
and see our flexible
dates tips).
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Book at least 2-3 weeks in
advance, 30 days for intl. flights.
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Fly mid-week if you can.
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Check fares at nearby airports (e.g.,
Newark, NJ instead of NYC). Most search engines
have a checkbox to do this automatically.
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Check roundtrip fares even if you're
traveling one-way. Round-trips are often
cheaper, for some strange reason.
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Travel on Thanksgiving Day itself instead
of the day before Thanksgiving.
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After Thanksgiving, return on Friday,
Saturday or Monday instead of Sunday.
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Fly on Christmas Day itself instead of
the days before Christmas.
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If you're traveling to more than one city,
use the engine's special Multi-City
search.
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Use the best website for your particular
situation. See our complete
tips.
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