Flying is the fastest, safest form of travel. It’s also one of the most expensive. For many people, taking a plane from New York to Los Angeles costs as much money as they make in a week (or more). However, plane ticket prices fluctuate a great deal and if you know what you’re doing, it’s possible to fly at a price that won’t leave a gaping hole in your finances.
Jennifer Martin a Small Business Consultant at Zest Business Consulting and frequent traveler recommends:
Set up Travel Alerts: Setting up travel alerts from the airports you frequently fly out of to hear about discounts and specials from your home airport and others nearby using websites like http://www.airfarewatchdog.com/.
Be flexible about the dates you travel: Use the flexible dates feature on a site like Cheapair to compare leaving at another time.
Use Kayak. Use +/- 3 days feature on Kayak to compare rates around the time you want to travel. Note it can be hard to find exactly what you want, but the work is worth it. After you add your travel information and search fr the flight, when the results pop up check the box in the upper left hand corner and click on +/- 3
And if you can’t find what you want on Kayak, Priceline is worth a quick look.
One final tactic you may want to use: after you’ve purchased your ticket, wait till a week or so before your flight to see if prices have changed. Airlines will often reduce pricing for flights with lots of extra seats shortly before a flight. If the price has gone down, contact the airline and ask if you can get your ticket price reduced to the new listed price.
Regardless of whether you’re flying across the country or to a city a few states over, if you take the appropriate steps, you don’t have to use a whole week’s pay to fly.
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