How to get Cheap Flight tickets
Are you looking for better Airline price deals?.
If you are ready to put in little bit of your time, you are sure of saving your money.
Let us understand some basics of airline ticket prices.
Every airline though is regulated by Government bodies or agencies, need not, cannot and will not have fixed air ticket prices for the various economic reasons. They can increase or decrease the fare at any time on their own. They need not tell what was the price earlier or what would be the price in the future.
It is better to avoid traveling after the noon till night of Fridays and similarly it is wiser to avoid the traveling through flights on Monday mornings. This holds good especially in America. Reason: Most of the people work at different locations from their hometown and therefore would be traveling every week to and from their work place to hometown in these days. So, the prices for a person who is not traveling quite often will be charged higher. Note that, most of the people who travel regularly through a specific airline would have registered or booked them with the airline will have a corporate/personal deal to get a lesser fare as they travel regularly.
Some of the International flights do charge weekend surcharge(an additional cost or charge) for the above weekend days(Fridays and Mondays).
There are meta search engines which get the airfares from different airlines on regular basis and show them on their sites. These prices are based on the current availability of seats as well as the current demand for the seat in the market. Meaning, for special days/events like Olympic or thanksgiving or Superbowl or Christmas etc the prices of the tickets will be higher(unless some airline specifically puts reduced fare). Reason, there would be high demand for every seat on the plane.
Another important criteria to get lower prices is the number of days between day of booking of seats and the departure date. Usually, if the number of days between the two is larger we can get lower priced fare. Reason, the airline is pretty much such of the seat bought well in advance.
Little bit of the other side is; sometimes the last minute deals will be much cheaper. Reason; Some of the bookings might have got canceled (by the person who booked/bought the ticket). Airlines usually sells those tickets for a very lower price so that instead of flight being flown with the empty seat, flying with the less fare is always economical as not much extra cost is required to fly the flight with the new person being accomodated in the empty seat.
Most importantly, the airlines provide better prices if it is a roundtrip (going and coming back with the same airlines). This does not hold good some times. Because the airlines might have only seat vacant one way. In such cases, looking for some other airlines for returning back would be cost economical.
Another important criteria to get lower prices is booking the air tickets/seats in group(if many people are travelling together). For this usually prices are reduced.
Some Airlines are usually costly most of the time. Surprisingly, they do sell the tickets for a price much lesser than the prices which are offered by usual low cost airliners.
Most of the tickets are sold through booking agents. Slowly this trend is changing as the Airlines are trying to avoid the commission being paid to the agents for every ticket/seat sold by them. So almost all of the airlines have their own sites from where we can get the seat availability and the fare for it.
Some times the agents provide good deals which are not available in the sites. Reason; since the agents are getting good business to every airlines, the airlines provide good deals to them so as to attract more seats being sold through them.
It is not the case always. Some times the sites provide better prices. Reason; the airlines system is so complex and updating the fare through all the available means(like website, agents, meta search engines) is not highly co-ordinated. So, the meta search engines/the airline sites provide better deals.
Some of the sites which would help to get better prices are American Airlines, British Airways, Continental, northwest airlines, SouthWest Airlines, United Airlines etc.
Some of the meta search engines which gather prices from various airlines based on availability are expedia, kayak, priceline, cheapoair, cheap tickets, bestfares, orbitz, travelocity, cheapflights etc.
There are no hard and fast rules. Some of the above will work mostly fine but at times might work reversely. But knowing these things would help you to getting well equipped to get the lower airfare.
Hope this helps.
If someone gets better ideas, please let me know and I will update this based on that.
