Cheap plane tickets for those who don't plan way ahead
 

In the past we have usually purchased plane tickets no more than 6 weeks or so out and have always managed to find good deals (once even for peak summer travel). In fact, the most we ever paid for airfare was when we purchased 3 months in advance. Airfares for this summer are looking really high right now, and I am wondering whether my usual strategies will work. Do you have any good particular strategies for finding good fares for people who do not plan way ahead. In the past I've booked a short combo hotel/airfare package and then extended, managed to find a lucky fare with IcelandAir and just lucked on to a promotional fare. Any other ideas? We live in Minnesota so we are not as lucky as those of you who live on the East coast.

Contact the airlines directly. I'll admit that I am absolutely terrible when it comes to booking our yearly trips to France in June - somehow, by the time we plan all the kids' camp stuff we are within a few weeks of wanting to book airlines to France in June. I had my son get online today with several agencies for airfares to France. The cheapest the typical ones like Orbitz and Travelocity were offering was $868.00 RT to CDG from Dulles. United Airlines itself was offering $571.00. Guess which we booked? Call your airline, or your travel broker (I use FareDeals). You can still get good prices for this summer.

Heard a story on the radio about the airlines and how much money they have lost. Point was, airfares for this summer are really high and will stay generally high unless people don't fly in which case there will be a fare war and prices will come down.

Topping for a friend who is looking for reasonable airfare from Charlotte, NC or Atlanta (or ??)to Paris first week of July, returning the end of the month. Not finding anything much below $1000. Any ideas?

Believe it or not, sometimes it's cheaper to fly to London, take the Eurostar to Paris and back, rather than flying direct to Paris, and as a bonus you can spend time in London! Have you tried consolidators and auctions like Priceline?

This is my recent experience. I had to "eat" a return ticket (U.S. back to Europe) and buy another (long story). I was desperate to find a ticket somewhat within my budget. I could be flexible by about a day or two. <BR><BR>After spending all day on the phone and Internet, I finally came up with a BA flight from Houston to Bologna through Gatwick for about $620, flying within the week.<BR><BR>This is what I learned: (1) Long an advocate of Travelocity, Expedia, etc., I quickly gave up on them. Going directly to the airlines was invariably cheaper. (2) Prices fluctuate not within days or even a day but within hours. I watched the BA price rise $200 within an hour. I had to adjust the date one day to get back to the original price. (3) The 7-day and 21-day rule really do make a difference, as of course does the Saturday night stay. <BR><BR>Fortunately, in this instance, I was able to devote the day to finding a ticket for a reasonable price. Unfortunately most of us don't have that luxury most of the time.

Another factor in keeping the fares high is that airlines are flying fewer planes to destinations and therefore are flying full. Continental pre 9/11 had 3 flights per day Newark-Paris. I checked yesterday and there is now 1 flight/day. The original poster might try pricing packages from airlines that include the hotel--it might make it more reasonable--or seem so. And you may luck into something--you never know.

Does anyone know if airlines are dumping seats at lower prices when they aren't fully booked 3 or so weeks before departure? Or, are they all flying so full now that they don't have to do this? One more question. How do you find out when an airline is introducing service to a new European city? I have found that this also usually leads to lower fares.

Santa Chiara: Thanks. Your comments are always valuable. Terri

I just went through the same thing. We are travelling in June to Italy, I have been tracking the flights sinmce December, they have steadily gone up. We finally bit the bullet and bought 2 days ago, since then they went up another $30, that seems to be the increment - the lowest I had seenf or the route we took was $970, the highest $1435 - we split the difference. I tried every way I could to make it work, flying out of a major US airport, to a bigger or smaller airport in Italy. Our destination is Tuscany - we thought it qwould be less expensive to fly into/out of Rome - WRONG! It was actually cheapest to go through Bologna, but Pisa got us closer for $10 more so we opted for that. We go to London then switch planes once to Pisa on Continental and US Air fro Cleveland. If you can get to Detroit you should have luck flying into some major Eurpoean cities like frankfurt, venice, or paris and transferring from there. I know there are a few promos right now into Milan, and lufthansa has extended its fare sale a bit. Check smarterliving.com site for promos and new routes.

The Savvy Traveler suggests a plan something like this:<BR>Find the best deals on sites like Travelocity, Expedia and Orbitz. Then see what fare you're able to get on Hotwire.com. Then put a bid in to priceline.com. I think there are web sites that will tell you what recent bidders on sites like priceline have been able to get.

Try www.airdeals.com. When you get to the main page, click on BEST DEALS to type in your request. The fares you see do not include taxes, so tack on about $100. They have a toll free number you can call to confirm the total amount. <BR>