Nabbing that Affordable Fare

Have airline ticket prices left you shell-shocked of late? Never fear: Fares have doubled on some routes, but on others they've fallen, and the online tools for locating deals have never been better. Nabbing an affordable fare is still possible—as long as you know where to look.

It's been years since ticket prices were this turbulent. You can thank the perfect storm of a sluggish economy, a weak dollar, and volatile oil prices for leading airlines to cut 10 to 15 percent of their U.S. flights, move many planes from domestic to international routes, and impose whopping fuel surcharges. Domestic fares are up at least 20 percent on average over this time last year, says Bob Harrell, president of the travel and aviation consulting firm Harrell Associates, while fares to Europe are down 20 percent on average.

"If you can be flexible as to where you want to go," says Harrell, "you'll find pockets of bargains where the supply-and-demand equation is out of sync." Can't be flexible? There are still deals to be had. "Wherever there's an empty seat on a plane, there's an incentive for the airline to discount," says Rick Seaney, CEO of the fare-monitoring site FareCompare.com. The trick, at a time when airlines have become much more targeted and tactical with their promotions, is to locate the discounts. "It's harder these days to detect when there's a fare sale going on," says Joe Brancatelli, publisher of JoeSentMe.com, the online bible for business travelers. "The days when you knew there was a fare sale because the airlines took out a big spread in the newspaper are gone. Fare sales now are largely unannounced."

So how do you find them?

Sign up for FareCompare.com's alerts so you'll know when prices drop on specific routes.

These alerts go out by e-mail several hours before the reduced fares are loaded into the airlines' reservations systems—which means you can nab the discounted seats before others do. You can request alerts for cities, countries, continents, airlines, and classes of service, and you can specify that you wish to be contacted only when the price drops by a certain amount (I recommend about $30 for U.S. cities and $80 for international destinations). Another good source for sales: FareCompare's deals blog (deals.farecompare.com).

Know the dates when fares on the route you want rise or fall because of seasonal demand.

"Every airline has four or five distinct major seasonal breaks in their pricing, which means that on a certain date, fares increase or drop dramatically," explains Seaney of FareCompare. Pinpoint that date so that you don't end up flying the very day before prices drop or after they're hiked. When you use FareCompare to search for fares on a route, a chart pops up showing the absolute lowest fare offered on that route every month for the next year. Say you want to fly from New York to Tokyo in November: If the October fare displayed is $1,045 and the November one is $775, click on the latter to learn on which date the price drops by $270. If it's November 15, then fly on or after that date. Seasonal breaks differ from airline to airline; if you click on "Advance Options," you can find out the date for your preferred airline and compare it with those of others on that route. (Note: This strategy doesn't apply to South America.)