Shopping for Airline Tickets

I hear from a travel expert on the news one day that 3 months before the flight are the cheapest prices. Before and after that, the prices are higher.

I never ever deal with discounters or cheapees. You get what you pay for. I book travel weekly for my hubby.

I only use American Air or Southwest. He flies both enough that we get free bags on both, priority through TSA, and other perks. We get a free ticket from Southwest about once every 8 weeks.

Just remember if you go with a cheap discounter, you are the first to get bumped, if something goes wrong you have no one at the the airport to help you, just an 800 #.

You can get good fair deals on the airline website. I book at least 21 days in advance and for months, hubby has flown to his routine Houston trip for less than $120. American also has deals on their site.

If you are not comfortable booking yourself, an agent can help you but it will cost you more for their services. It is easy to do, I've been doing it with hotels, rental cars and airlines over 20 years.

Good luck.

I do the usual: Kayak, Orbitz, Cheap Tickets to look what's out there and what the price range is. Then I go to the airlines webpages and check if they have any better deals. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't - I have had it go both ways.
The most important thing is to look far in advance and check mid-week (Tuesday/Wednesday) that's when ticket are cheapest. We booked our flights for June in March, when we first checked on a Friday or Saturday they were $400 a pop, my DH booked them on a Tuesday night for less than $300.
Good luck.

mobissimo.com lets you compare rates.

If the airline website has it, check out the "low fare calendar" feature. It allows you to see the price of the flight each day of the month. If you are flexible, you can plan your trip for the least expensive days.

A lot of people recommend places like hotwire and expedia, but I prefer going to the individual airline websites. I've heard that if you have to change a flight or hotel on some of those, it can be expensive or a big delay to get your money credited back to you.

Just remember.... there are getting to be so many add-on fees that airlines are charging, that what seemed to be a bargain flight turns into one just as expensive as another airline.

Personally, I like Southwest Airlines.... bags fly free, and they haven't started charging you for other things like carry-on bags, either.

If you or your husband fly frequently, especially on business, it is best to use one airline. American is probably the best. If you happen to be on their Gold plan, there is a dedicated phone number to call that gets you help faster than the regular phone line, and they don't ding you so hard if you have to change your flight plans or if you miss a plane. I have to say that American has been really good to us - I try to fly with them before anyone else because of that.

Missing a plane is the LAST thing we want to do, but it happens. Thank God for cell phones - if you call them to change your flight before they shut that door, you've got a chance to not get reamed. (If you call after the flight takes off, kiss your money goodbye...) If you have bought through discount places, you don't have help like this and you won't get your money back. I don't know how you'd get on another flight, either.

The other way to handle it is to use the same trusted and excellent travel agent, but you really would do that if you flew all the time.

Dawn

I've had really good luck with Bing Travel.

Kayak.com to search all of the discount sites.

Generally you get the best deal working with the airlines themselves though.