You must find a good airfare, so you scour the search engines and peruse Priceline. Are you finished?
Chances are, you haven't even started.
Increasingly, the first places to go for low fares are special offers pages on airline web sites.
A Few Examples of Airline Offers
Let's say you want to go from Atlanta to Cancun for a little relaxation. Checking one of the airfare search engines, there is domestic service roundtrip for between $434-$464 USD. That assumes a three-week advance purchase with no refunds.
Next stop: Aeromexico's Faresavers page on the Internet, where you quickly see a roundtrip fare to Cancun from Atlanta for about half the search engine price: $219 USD. These too are non-refundable, and the fine print says you'll pay up to $80 USD in taxes. So what? Even at $299, the savings over the search engine price is significant.
Here's another: Madrid-Lisbon One-Way was available at $65 USD on Iberia Airlines "offer page" while Uniglobe.com/Portugalia had it at $182.
One more: London-Tel Aviv roundtrip came in at an eye-catching $320 USD on Balkan Bulgarian's special offers page, Wednesday only. It was $1478 at British Airways-El Al/TravelNow.
Remember that these are "snapshots" and not necessarily what you would find five days or five minutes later. Your results definitely will vary.
To illustrate that disclaimer, consider a domestic example: a round trip ticket from Los Angeles to Omaha with Saturday overnight stay. A search on America West, well-known for discount fares, turns up a fare of $356 USD. The same search engine that came up with the higher Cancun fares produces $247 USD for this trip!
What happened?
The difference is this: on the Cancun trip, a "special offers" page was used at the airline site. On the Omaha itinerary, a simple airline inquiry about the trip was entered. By the way, America West had a fare on its weekly specials page recently between Las Vegas and Omaha for $148 USD R/T.
The lesson is simple. Don't waste much time searching airline sites unless you're looking at their best offers--but their special offers pages should be consulted before the search engines.
Finding the Best Special Offer Pages
Once on About's Budget Travel site, you are one click away from a page that takes you to special offer pages on all continents. You'll learn that the United States no longer holds a monopoly on this concept.
Special offer pages are popping up all over the world, and not just at the largest airlines. If your itinerary includes Spain, it makes good sense to check Iberia's offers. For example, a recent offer here: 10 EUR ($12 USD) for a one-way fare between Madrid and Lisbon.
Icelandair is usually worth a look if you're bound for Europe.
Naturally, there are things you should watch out for on the special offer sites.
