Tips for Booking Air Travel on a Budget

If you're on a budget but you'd like to fly somewhere for your next vacation, there's good news.  "Domestic fares are down 9 percent over a year ago, and summer fares to Europe are down 19 percent," said Mike Fridgen, product manager for Farecast.com.

"Bargains are out there," agreed George Hobica, founder of AirfareWatchdog.com.

Examples: JFK to Paris, for less than $500 round trip; Southwest's $49 one-way tickets; and once-in-a-lifetime dream fares from Newark, N.J., to Hawaii, in the mid-$400s, including taxes and fees.

These and many other deals are easy to find online. But there are some strategies you can use to make sure you get the lowest possible airfares. Here are some tips from the experts.

Research: "The most important thing is to do your homework," said Michele Perry, spokeswoman for TripAdvisor.com, which just launched a new flight search aggregator.

To do your research right, you'll need to compare fares from many different sources. "Too many people get cozy with their favorite search engine, blithely thinking that it's the best," Hobica said. If there were one best Web site, he added, "the rest would be out of business by now."

"There's not one Web site out there that has the cheapest fare," agreed John E. DiScala, founder of JohnnyJet.com.

Sign up for newsletters and e-mail alerts from airlines that serve the routes you're shopping for, and from sites like AirfareWatchdog, JohnnyJet, Farecast and others, including FareCompare, Kayak, Orbitz and Travelocity. Many airlines post their best fares only on their own Web sites, including Southwest, Allegiant Air, SAS, Aloha, Aer Lingus, Qantas, Alaska, Air New Zealand and JetBlue, Hobica said.

Absurdly cheap fares, like a recent $14 flight on JetBlue from New York to San Francisco, don't show up on booking sites because the sites can't earn a commission on them. But that fare was mentioned in an alert from AirfareWatchdog, in JetBlue's e-mail stream and on Twitter, Hobica said.

"They Twittered to death that $14 fare, but it was not on Kayak, Travelocity or Expedia," Hobica said.

Airlines may also make deals with some sites and not others, so you may find fares differ for the same flight on different Web sites.

Another source for news about cheap fares, DiScala said, is the message boards of Webflyer.com.

And don't overlook promotional codes. "If you sign up for an airline's frequent-flier program or the airline newsletter, some airlines will generate a promotional code that you can use to get a discount when you book," Hobica said. Often these codes are generated individually and can be used only once, so you won't find them on Web sites.

Finally, as crazy as it sounds, check out package deals. Sometimes it's cheaper to book a hotel and airfare package even if you don't need lodging.

DiScala said he recently saw an airfare on United for $590, but on Travelocity, the same airfare was $480 including four nights in a hotel. That's because hotels and tourism agencies sometimes subsidize airfares to bring people in.

Now or later: You'd need a crystal ball to know for sure whether fares will keep going down or if they're stabilizing.

"There's anticipation that we're fairly close to rock bottom," said TripAdvisor's Perry.

But Hobica said the news on the economy just keeps getting worse, and "the airlines are panicking again. Spring fares softened and they're softening more. I expect to see summer fares soften, too."

He added, "We're seeing a lot more low fares with no advance purchase, or just three days' advance, because the airlines realize that people are afraid to plan way ahead in this uncertain economy."

Message Board: How Do You Find the Best Fares?