We usually do road trips but this time would like to fly to California (relatives in LA)to save time. What are the best ways to save money? Do you book during the week? on the weekend? Does it matter how many days for roundtrip? a week as oppose to 2 weeks? I have heard of Hotwire is it "you get what they give you take it or leave it?" Thank for the help.

Sign up for emails from the airlines that fly between the two cities.

Sign up for travelocity's fare watcher so that they'll email you when the price of that flight goes down.

Your best bets are usually to fly mid-week as opposed to the weekends. Many good fares require at least 14 days advanced purchase and require that you spend at least one Saturday night before returning home. More and more airlines are relaxing those requirements, though.

Each fare has its own rules about how long you can/need to stay. Your best bet is to do a bit of research. Keep checking fares to see how they go up and down and then buy when you see a good fare. It may not be there a few hours later when you go back to purchase, so be prepared to buy as soon as you spot it.

Hotwire and priceline are both options for purchasing flights, but they are both blind. That means just what you said - you take what they give you. You specify the two cities and the dates of travel. You have to be willing to travel during their specified times (something like 6am-midnight, but you can find the details at their websites). You have to be willing to take a layover (unless they've added a non-stop option), but they give a maximum time for the layover (something like 4 hours, but again check for details). I also believe they both state that they will not give you more than one layover without your permission.

Once you agree to a price, if they have something your credit card will be charged immediately, and you cannot change or cancel the tickets.

If you have flexibility in your schedule such that you don't have strong feelings about what time you fly, this can be great. But be sure to do your homework. Know what you could get a regular sale fare for and be sure that whatever hotwire or priceline ticket you're interested in is significant enough savings to make it worth the unknowns.

Find out which airline(s) have the flights that you want and get in the habbit of checking the fares on their sites daily.

When you see a bargin, take it right away.

Keith

I start with something like expedia.com to get an idea of which airlines fly the route and the times of the flights and pricing. Then I go to the specific website for the airlines and price it there. Often it will show a chart with cheapest days of the week. Or you can figure this out by entering a few different dates for your trip.

For the large multi-airport markets like LA or NY, be flexible as far as which airport you'll fly into/out of. Some travel sites will do fuzzy searches and find the cheapest flights across multiple airports. Travelocity is one of those. Within a roughly 50-mile radius, the greater LA area has five airports with national carriers, so being a little open to some driving can save you LOTS of money.

The Saturday night stayover rule, in my experience, isn't quite as common as it used to be. However, the 14-day advance purchase rule still holds. For your best rates, buying 14 days before your travel date is best. These will generally be non-refundable fares and cannot be changed without paying a fairly stiff penalty; but if your dates are firm, you'll do fine.

The most popular low-cost carriers generally don't participate in other travel search engines, so check on their specific websites (and I'm referring to JetBlue and Southwest in particular).

Keith, it looks like a rabbit mated with a Hobbit = "habbit". It's Friday.

Two search engines that I like for finding tickets are sidestep.com and kayak.com. These do not sell tickets directly. If you see a fare that you like, you click on it and the site re-directs you to the site that is offering that fare.

Once you find a fare - always check the airline's website. It may (or may not) save you the $5 fee that travelocity & orbitz charge.

Check fares in the morning - I've heard that new prices are made available in the middle of the night.

There are 7-day advance purchase prices, which are higher than 14-day advance purchase prices, which are higher than 21, etc., generally up to 41 or 42 days with many airlines. Past that and they actually start going back up because of fuel cost and other uncertainties. (When you buy airline tickets these days know that you are supporting thousands of livelihoods in the futures market pits and hedge fund trading rooms all over the world.)

Midweek might or might not be cheaper, depending on origin and destinations. Many airports are actually cheaper on weekends because the bulk of their passengers are businesspeople, making Mondays and Fridays the worst times, with midweek mornings and late afternoons also high. Not all flights are priced the same throughout the same day, weekends included. Even redeyes can be surprisingly expensive, especially Sunday nights.

Most of the legacy carriers dropped the Saturday night stay requirement some time ago, and in fact for domestic travel increasingly one-way fares are getting closer to helf of round-trip fares on popular routes, a la Southwest, Song, and some of the other "discount" airlines.

That latter point is also important. Just because it's Southwest or another low cost airline, do not assume it's the cheapest price. On the west coast, for instance, Alaska Airlines typically smokes Southwest on fares, with more nonstops, assigned seats, and other perks that Southwest doesn't offer. Pricing on both the legacy and low cost airlines is "situational" - if they can get more out of a seat they will, and it will change daily or more than once a day, as their yield/revenue management software recomputes and recomputes fares faster than you can say Fodors.

Finally, as alluded to by rgw_lgb, watch out for additional non-flying costs that will offset any savings you think you're getting on airfare. Example - rental cars are much more expensive at Orange County Airport (as in Disneyland) than they are at LAX. Or, airport-imposed taxes on rental cars at places like Seattle, or some Texas airports, add so much to the net cost of a couple weeks' rent that it's cheaper to take a taxi downtown to one of the rental agencies in the city center, get your car and return it there, and taxi back to the airport, than just getting it at the airport in the first place.

It's a complex and incredibly competitive field, and if you want to save money and/or make it as comfortable and enjoyable as you can under the circumstances, you have to be a canny and savvy shopper, and put some research time into it. Or, you can just buy your ticket la-dee-da, and accept the hearty thanks from the trading rooms.

I use the fare-watching feature of Travelocity on several routes. Any time there's a significant fare change on one of my selections, I get an email.

A couple of weeks ago, I got an email that my MDT-SFO (Harrisburg PA to San Francisco,) fare had gone from 329 RT to something like 229. I got the email mid-morning, indicating the fare had been found at 2AM. I checked with my wife, she said do it, which I did, and the fare was actually 199. This was within two hours of getting the email. And there was a wide range of July and August flights available.

However, by evening, that fare was back up to 339. We were in good shape. But had we dithered, there would have been no savings.

If you see the fare, and it looks good, take it right away....