Tricks, for the Treat of Cheap Airfare!

Here’s a Halloween treat for you! I always get asked about finding the best airfare – what day, how do I find it, etc.

Thanks to one of my favorite travel websites, AirfareWatchdog.com, here are your answers in one consolidated place!

In addition to the tips in the link, I’d like to add just a few more tricks.

1 – Look at the airport’s website to see if there are smaller, local airlines that may fly your route. These smaller airlines may not show up on the big search engines. Examples of these are Allegiant Air and Sun Country.

Sun Country does have layovers in Minneapolis so you might want to think about the time of year if your final destination is not MSP…which brings me to point number two.

2 – If you are going to have a connection,  try to avoid cold weather cities, in the winter. You don’t want to be flying from Boston to LA, only to get stuck in Chicago thanks to a snowstorm. Try looking at connecting through cities in warmer climates during the winter!

My sister once had an opportunity to get bumped, and get a free ticket, from a cross-country flight. She was supposed to have a layover in Houston. It was wintertime. They rerouted her through Chicago. I figured she was going to get stuck in Chicago. Not so. But I still wouldn’t have taken the chance. Ok, for a free ticket, maybe 😉

3 – Always try to avoid layovers in NYC.

Maybe it’s because the ‘big three’ are my home airports but ugh, ugh and more ugh.

4 – Be flexible with your airports and get creative. Flying into the Big Apple, you have at least three options. Flying to Miami? Also take a look at West Palm Beach and Fort Lauderdale. Want to avoid the big airports of Vancouver or Seattle? Look at Bellingham, Washington.

Last year the boyfriend and I were flying from EWR to PHX for Thanksgiving — and as expected airfare was a fortune. We were flexible with dates and were able to fly on Tuesday night – which was still very expensive.

Do you know it cost less for us to fly EWR to LAS (yes, Vegas), spend the night and then get one way tickets (it’s only an hour flight so whoever had the cheapest fare won) from LAS to PHX on the Wednesday morning? For the return, I was able to secure a nonstop flight from PHX into EWR.

Even with the additional expenses: cab fare from the airport to the Strip, one night in a hotel AND a cab back to the airport in the morning — I still saved a few hundred dollars, making this convoluted trip well worth it.

We were delayed arriving in Vegas but everything else ran smoothly. Had we experienced a delay leaving Vegas, I might be singing a different tune.  And if you are wondering, I didn’t lose that saved money in the casinos either.

Hope these tricks help you score a great treat and Happy Halloween!