How to get Cheap Air Fares & Best Travel Discounts

I have worked in the airline business for a good number of years and when I used to tell people what I do, I mostly used to get the standard question “Oh gosh…why are airline fares so expensive?”.

At the beginning I used to try to satisfy my interlocutor’s perplexity by describing in brief the economics of air fare structures & sales but I quickly realized that it wasn’t the answer my friends were looking for. Their real question was “How can I get cheaper air fares?”

I perfectly understood their concern. Air fares tend to be the biggest slice in the holiday budget especially if you are going on long haul trips to some exotic places around the world.  And if you are living on a moderate income flying to some far off place can be considered a rare luxury. 

However there are ways to reduce this expense by smartly shopping around and knowing some techniques to get real discounted air fares.

The Age of the Net

The internet has provided a lot of opportunities – not the least in finding good shopping deals online - but most importantly to find out what other people who have already purchased a particular product have to say about it and how they got it cheaper. In the travel industry there has been a big boom in online travel agent sites & tour operators, fare comparison sites and review sites.

I am picking a few big sites as an example you have probably heard already about:

Trip Advisor:  A large online community of people who rate and review accommodation, holiday trips and even flights. It’s an excellent way to find out about a place before getting there through honest reviews of people who have actually been there. Trip advisor also has an air fare search engine to find flight availability and prices.

Sky Scanner: A search engine for flight itineraries and prices. It’s an excellent site to scour through the net to find the best available prices within a specific date range

Opodo: This is an online search portal for flights, hotels, package holidays and late deals.  This is one of the most famous sites together with expedia.com because of their large inventory.

Spa Travel: If you are in the UK wanting to travel to Europe, Middle East and further beyond , this is an ideal place to find excellent holiday packages such as all-inclusive hotels, Spa Breaks and luxury five star hotels at amazing prices.

Is the down-town Travel agent still Helpful?

Online is not the only answer however. Even in this day & age when everything is available at a click of a mouse, it is still advisable to visit a brick & mortar travel agent. The reason is that most agents still have better prices than online

 published fares because they sell a large inventory and have longstanding business relations with the airlines. Moreover they have the experience. Most of them have been in business for decades and they can still offer very relevant advice on how to get the best value out of your holiday budget.

Reverse Auction Methods & ‘Bucket Shops’

Non-traditional methods, or what I like to call ‘methods on the fringe’ , have also been making their way in the recent years. After all the web has been a fertile ground for experimenting with innovative methods.

One such method is the reverse auction in which you first bid for what you are willing to pay for an air fare on a specific route and if the airline has a last minute seat release on that route the seat is yours. 

Another way of finding cheap air fare tickets is through ‘Bucket Shops’.  Bucket shops bulk buy tickets from airline at very discounted rates. The way the system works is that you propose a time window during which you like to fly and if something comes up in the last minute you can have that week at a heavy discount.