Brush Up Your Flexible-Date Fare Searching

Alaska Airlines newly has added a 30-day-range flexible date search to its booking Web site, and American and Southwest already have similar searches. However, most other U.S. airlines are limited in the flexible-date fare searches they offer. Credit: Alaska Airlines

With fares getting higher, and low fare seats becoming scarcer, there is no better time than now to brush up on your flexible-date-search skills. If you don't particularly care when you fly as long as there's a cheap fare, flexible is the way to go.

Airfarewatchdog.com has created a chart and some important tips to help you distinguish between the various Web sites offering flexible-date searches.

Most sites — including Cheaptickets, Hotwire, and Orbitz — let you search only over a 30 day period of your choice, both for the outward bound and the return flight. Allegiant and Southwest, however, allow you to search over one 30-day period on the outbound and any other 30-day period on the return.

Then there are Travelocity and Cheapair, both of which allow a 330-day search. The only problem is that they're not very good at guaranteeing that there will be seats available at the fares initially shown in the search, whereas the other sites do a better job at this. The reason is that these searches take up a lot of computer processing power, and you can't have it both ways: a wide-date-range search, or better seat availability predictions.

There are other distinctions between search sites, as the chart shows. Some do one-way searches, others don't; most sites allow you to search for more than one seat, but Travelocity doesn't; some do searches on routes from the U.S. and Canada to international destinations (even if they say they don't), while others do not. And some charge fees, but others give you a free ride.

This month Alaska Airlines has added a nice 30-day search. American has had a 31-day search for quite a while, as has Southwest. But most airlines are limited in their flexible-date searches, which is a shame.

• Stay Alert to Larceny in the Air
• Relaxing at the Airport When You're Delayed
• The Top 10 Easiest U.S. Airports to Get to