9:33 PM How To Book Cheap Flights - Air Travel Deals | ||||
#book cheap flights # How To Book Cheap Flights Air Travel Dealsby Beth M. on 2012-01-24 24 In my circle of friends, I am known as the budget traveler, a point of pride with me. I have a long list of cheap trips under my belt, and I love talking travel with whoever wants to listen, and not only to encourage them to travel often but to consider doing it cheaply. If someone wants to stay at the Ritz, I don t discourage them, but most people think they can t afford travel and don t know how to find bargains, and therefore often decide to stay home. But you don t need to be confined to your home, in my opinion. If you know how to find good deals, you can travel more often, stay longer at your destination, or actually take that distant trip you ve been pining for. Book Cheap Flights Air Travel Deals Through Air Fare Comparison SitesThe first step in affordable travel is to find budget airfares. Prior to the internet, I would spend hours planning a trip, calling airline after airline, shopping for tickets for days, shifting around my travel schedule, and checking flights at different hours all to find the cheapest flight. Luckily, I enjoyed this game and usually came up with some remarkably good prices. Now you can do the same thing at lightning speed using aggregators, which come up with the cheapest flight with a just a few clicks on the computer. We ve covered a number of them in our best travel sites article. but I d like to share a few more air ticket comparison sites below, which are great for sniffing out great deals in air travel. Hipmunk.com: This service is one of the slickest flight trackers around. It s very visual and has a really nice interface fast, graphical and easy to use. I like how you can sort your flight details according to various factors such as by Agony (how much of a pain the flight is?), Price, Duration (length of travel time), Departure Time, Arrival Time and Airline. This is an example of an innovative site that has gone out of the box to deliver a great service. Air Fare Watchdog: The site at airfarewatchdog.com helps you track reductions in air fares that are made by airlines on a regular basis. Daily changes to these flight rates occur daily, but are not actively advertised. If you decide to subscribe to this service, you ll be alerted and notified of such air fare discounts and other offers that may be available. FareCompare: This airline ticket comparison site provides you with tools to access real time data on air fares sourced from hundreds of airlines. You can subscribe and keep an eye on fares that are specific to your requirements, such as those originating from a specific airport or those for a particular type of seating. I used their Search Compare tool for tickets, but got annoyed by all the popping windows perhaps their alert system works better? Check them out at FareCompare.com. Travelocity: This well known travel site has its own fare tracking tools and services, one of which is called FareWatcher Plus. It allows you to monitor ticket prices for up to 10 destinations. Through this tool, you ll find out what kind of special offers, discounts and deals are available for your selected locales. As a Travelocity member, you ll also be privy to additional free services such as their RSS Instant Fare Notification and Flight Alert Notification. Check out the Travelocity site here . Bing Travel: There used to be a site called Farecast.com that worked to give you predictions on airfare prices. Well, this technology and service has now been incorporated into Bing Travel. It s different from other airfare comparison sites because it tries to stay a step ahead by offering you a forecast on expected ticket prices. That is, this tool analyzes fares to see if prices are rising or falling. You can search for flights through Bing Travel, but you ll also benefit from the predictive tool (formerly Farecast), which aims to provide you recommendations on whether to go ahead vs wait on a particular ticket purchase. Here s more on Bing Travel . I ve noted that most of the time, the different aggregators offer the same airlines, prices, and flight times, but that may not always be the case. Here are some rules of thumb when it comes to landing a cheap flight. 17 Helpful Tips To Secure A Cheap Flight
What are your favorite tips for saving on air travel? Created January 12, 2010. Updated January 24, 2012. Copyright 2012 The Digerati Life. All Rights Reserved.
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