How to Find Cheap Airfare

I am a jetsetter. I travel purely for pleasure. I was born to travel. I travel often. And I'm always on the lookout for deals. I love to explore new places and see how other people live. I also often receive emails from people asking for my travel tips. I've given my readers tips on how to avoid germs on planes. Now here are my secret tips on how to book airline travel while getting the best deals possible. These tips go beyond Orbitz, Travelocity, and Priceline so listen up all my fellow wanderlusters:

Search Travel Algorithms
For U.S. Travel: Search Matrix for the best deals for the place(s) and dates you are wanting to travel. Then go to the different airline websites quoted and create your own deal based on what the Matrix tells you (see open-jaw tickets below). Or search Hipmunk for the best itineraries for your selected dates and places.
For European Travel: Search Momondo for the dates you plan to travel and if you like the price select it. Easy, right?

Shop Budget Airlines
Search for budget-friendly, low cost flights through AirNinja, WhichBudget, and SkyScanner. I also use these sites to help me plan trips.

See When Prices Will Go Up and Down
Search for predictions and see historical data for your travel timeframes via FareCompare and find out if the price for your route is going to go up or down or stay the same.

Best Days to Book Airline Deals
Start your search for airline deals at least three months before you plan to fly. Pay attention to the day of the week when searching for airline deals. The best days to find deals are Monday through Wednesday. Tuesday afternoon around 3 p.m. is the BEST day and time to find airline deals. And it's always cheaper to fly mid-week than on weekends. And don't wait until the last minute to book your trip, if you wait two weeks before you plan to leave town, then the airlines will rob you on prices. If you waited until the last minute and are desperate then go to LastMinuteTravel.

When to Travel to Europe
If you want to travel from the U.S. to Europe or vice versa and keep costs down then the best times to travel to Europe are at the end of August and prices continue to drop through mid-October. If you must travel to Europe during summer months (May, June, July), you will pay premium prices, you've been warned. :)

Try an Open-Jaw Ticket
I do this often when traveling in the U.S. An open-jaw ticket is when you book your flight one-way from your home city to your travel destination and then book a one-way ticket from a different city back to your home city. It's worth checking out if this is cheaper for you before booking your round trip ticket. I recently booked an open-jaw ticket from Seattle to Pittsburgh and then from Manhattan back to Seattle. It was $400 cheaper to do that than book round trip! Plus, I get to explore more places this way.

Explore Twitter
If you are on Twitter (you can find me @CopyStrands) search for the hashtags: #Travel, #TravelDeals, #Airlines, #Airfares, #TravelTuesday, #Cruises, #CruiseDeals, or search for the city you are wanting to travel to (example: #Maui). Also be sure to follow all airlines on Twitter for their exclusive deals, I follow:

@AirAsia
@AirCanada
@AirFranceUS
@AlaskaAir
@AmericanAir
@BritishAirways
@Delta
@HawaiianAir
@IcelandAir
@JetBlueCheeps
@SouthwestAir
@United
@USAirways
@VirginAmerica
@VirginAtlantic

And travel tweets worth checking out include: @TravelDeals, @AirfareWatchdog, @ShermansTravel. Twitter works for finding deals, Twitter is where I found this killer travel deal using the hashtag #TravelTuesday in my TweetDeck.

Okay my fellow wanderlusters, be sure to share your airline travel deal tips in the comments for others to benefit from! What are your secret travel tips? What is the best travel deal you've ever scored? Where are you traveling next?

Get more Be Well-traveled tips.
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P.S. We do home exchanges to keep travel costs down too!

Photo: Inspire Please