If you’re looking for dirt cheap airline tickets here’s the second set of tips to get super cheap tickets.
6. Keep checking.
Airlines always work to have full planes, so they may add discount seats without warning to fill a flight up. A flight you might have given up on could suddenly offer a seat if you check back in a day or two or even a week or month later.
7. Use Your Age - Young or Old!.
Ask about senior discounts or student discounts. If you’re a member of Student Advantage, you can sometimes find discounts too.
8. Ask about airports other than your destination’s main airport.
Look into secondary airports outside the city or even in a nearby city that is less popular. People going to New Orleans for Mardi Gras who find no flights available can get lucky by flying into Baton Rouge, an hour away, or Mobile, Ala., two hours away by car.
9. Check smaller discount airlines that may not be included in the central reservation systems.
These smaller airlines usually only have area-specific flights available (e.g., the Southeast), but they are much cheaper than the big airlines. So especially consider them if you’re not travelling too far.
10. Join a travel club.
If you fly more than twice a year, the price of joining can easily make up for itself in the long run.
11. Fly on a mid-weekday.
Fridays and Mondays are the most expensive times to fly. And weekends are obviously in high demand. Tuesdays and Wednesdays are the cheapest days to fly. Also, staying overnight on a Saturday can save you money, because then you’ll get charged an excursion rate, not a business rate.
12. Try a Ticket Consolidator.
A consolidator is an intermediary company that buys tickets at a discount directly from the airline. You benefit from their rates. However, while the consolidator industry has gained respect in recent years, be sure to use one that is reputable. Some have gone out of business overnight, leaving customers in the lurch.
You can find consolidators by looking for the small advertisements with 800 numbers they place in the travel section of any metropolitan newspaper. Some consolidators specialize in overseas flights while others focus on the domestic market and still others do both. Some even give additional discounts to students.
Make sure you ask about cancellation charges as such tickets usually carry big penalties for changes or cancellations.
Cheap Airline Ticket Secrets - Part 1
Airline pricing is a complex, unpredictable system that is driven by three factors: competition, demand, and inventory. Here's how it works. All the major airlines feed their available seats and prices into four central reservation systems that are owned by airline conglomerates. The systems are Apollo, Sabre, WorldSpan and Galileo. Airlines then change their prices based on demand. If a certain flight is selling well, the price will increase. If another flight has no takers, the fare
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