Top 10 Ways to Get a Low Fare

Let's say you've found the lowest fare, and then the day after purchase your non-refundable fare for the same itinerary, flights, and dates goes down. If you ask for it, you can get a refund for the difference. But some airlines will charge you a costly "administrative" fee, wiping out any savings. Others will give you the entire fare difference without extracting a fee. These airlines include Alaska, JetBlue, United, USAir, and Southwest.

It might be cheaper to buy a fare from the United States to, say, Frankfurt, and then a separate ticket on another airline from Frankfurt to, say, Istanbul rather than one fare from the U.S. straight through to Istanbul. This fare trick also works for flights to Asia and the Caribbean.

If you're serious about saving money, you need to check U.S. domestic airfares three times a day during the week, because that's how often they might change. Check them once on Saturday and Sunday. International fares are updated just once a day.

Airlines can only change fares around 5 PM on Saturday and Sunday. So, if you're an airline fare analyst and you're trying to sneak one over your competition, you'll do it with the last fare change on Friday night, which appears in airfare search engines around midnight Friday. Your competition can't match your sale fares until the 5 PM Saturday update.

It's often significantly cheaper to buy an air/hotel package or an air/rental car package rather than airfare alone. Lastminute.com (formerly Site59.com) is the online leader in providing cheaper-than-air-alone packages.

Southwest offers daily "Ding" deals that pop up on your computer and can save you some cash.

Last-minute weekend fares are often great deals, but most people don't realize that they can construct itineraries by combining two of these fares (from New York to Atlanta and from Atlanta to San Antonio, for example, if a New York to San Antonio weekend fare isn't being offered).

If you're just looking for a bargain and don't care exactly when you travel, you can sometimes save hundreds of dollars by using the flexible dates features of major travel sites. Travelocity and Cheapair have good flexible search functionality for North American travel, and Orbitz is good for US and international travel.

Some airlines have "private" sales, reserving their very best fares for their own sites, so you must check individual airline web sites as well.

Don't assume that Travelocity, Orbitz, Expedia, and Sidestep all have the same fares. They don't. Especially on international fares, one of these online travel agencies could have a fare several hundred dollars higher or lower than another. So check them all, and use multi-site search engines like Kayak, Sidestep, Qixo, and Booking Buddy.