Last–minute airline tickets for trips abroad can easily break the bank. But these simple strategies will lead to big savings—even when there's little time to spare

I'm so jealous of travelers who can book their plane tickets months ahead and grab those low advance-purchase fares. I just can't manage to plan that far ahead. Twice this year, for instance, I've had to fly to Europe on less than two weeks' notice. It's hard enough to find a cheap last-minute flight when you're bound for a big hub that has plenty of low-fare competition such as London, Dublin, or Amsterdam. But I was headed to airports that are notoriously costly to fly into: Florence, Innsbruck, and Moscow. Still, I snagged some pretty good fares in early spring even though I was being finicky: My goal was not the absolute cheapest tickets but rather the lowest fares for the flights that best suited my work schedule and that had convenient connections on airlines I was willing to fly. Here's what I learned about how to find affordable last-minute flights.

*Don't pay the outrageous fares on airline Web sites.
The first ticket I needed was a round-trip from New York to Florence. It was a mere three days before departure, and Air France was selling a round-trip via Paris for $615 on U.K. consolidator www.lastminute.com. The carrier's Web site, meanwhile, was quoting $2,014. The second ticket I needed was from New York to Innsbruck to Moscow to New York. Ten days in advance, I found one on the travel search engine ITA Software (www.itasoftware.com) for $1,630 that began with a United Airlines flight from New York. United's Web site was quoting $2,415.

*Check and then recheck the Web sites that specialize in last-minute bookings, since fares can be volatile.
For my New York–Florence trip, a route with no nonstops, my initial thought had been to fly Aer Lingus via Dublin. Aer Lingus is becoming the low-fare carrier for transatlantic flights, offering inexpensive last-minute fares to a number of European cities by way of Dublin. Unfortunately, as I learned on the airline's Web site, Florence isn't one of them. My next step was to check out www.lastminute.com. That's where I found the round-trip on Air France via Paris for $615. Next I went to travel search engines Mobissimo and SideStep. Bingo! They pointed me to a $579 Lufthansa itinerary available through www.airfare.com. Less than 72 hours before departure, when I checked www.lastminute.com again, its $615 fare had suddenly soared to $2,024. In a panic, I raced back to www.airfare.com to see if its price had jumped too: It had, but only by $45, so I nabbed it for a total of $624. Interestingly, the next day, just 48 hours before departure, I rechecked www.lastminute.com, and its fare on Air France had once more plummeted to $615.