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"AIRFARE CHEAP" 1996 Frustrated because the fare your travel agent has just quoted you is outside your budget? I know the feeling. This summer, I had to get to Hawaii for a conference on the cheap.First try with a travel agent: $940 round-trip, or several hundred dollars more than my budget would allow. AIRFARE CHEAP Another time, I needed to buy a one-way ticket from Chicago to Minneapolis. First try: about $350. "What airport is that from?" I asked. "O'Hare." "What if I fly from Midway?" "About $150." AIRFARE CHEAP Can't find what you need? Try a Google Web Search in the box below!
I ended up going to Hawaii for about $540 round-trip, and I found a one-way fare back from Chicago for $69. By using my computer to do the travel planning, I saved about $500 over what travel agents had quoted me. There are a number of other ways to shave dollars off airfares, including charter flights and consolidator's tickets. And a good travel agent should often be able to come up with a lower fare than you can find yourself. AIRFARE CHEAP The best strategy probably is to research fares through online reservation systems and then call a good travel agent to see if he or she can do better. But be forewarned: Fare structures are about as complicated as today's airplanes. You could spend hours searching for the lowest fare, only to get the same fare that you could have gotten in minutes by calling your travel agent. AIRFARE CHEAP Worse, if you actually buy your tickets online, you could end up paying more than if you had called a good travel agent. In the past few months, several sites have sprung up on the World Wide Web to allow computer users to check fares, flight availability and buy plane tickets. These are in addition to services such as easySABRE, which have been available on America Online, CompuServe and Prodigy for years. AIRFARE CHEAP Can't find what you need? Try a Google Web Search in the box below!
For the trip from Chicago, I was able to look in the computer and find the rules for the rock-bottom fare of $69. I adjusted my travel plans to accommodate those restrictions. For the trip to Hawaii, I used two tickets. Instead of buying a ticket from Minneapolis to Honolulu - the first fare quoted to me - I bought a ticket from Minneapolis to San Francisco and another ticket from San Francisco to Honolulu. As an added bonus, I worked in a three-day stay in San Francisco. AIRFARE CHEAP Why San Francisco? I figured that it would be cheaper to fly to Honolulu from a major city on the West Coast. (Keep in mind that this might have been the one case where airfares actually followed logic.) I sat down at my computer and tried the different possibilities: Los Angeles to Honolulu, San Francisco to Honolulu, Portland to Honolulu and Seattle to Honolulu. AIRFARE CHEAP San Francisco came in the cheapest, at about $370. I had a discount certificate which allowed me to fly to the West Coast for $170 round-trip. Grand total: $540. If I had paid the normal advance purchase fare from Minneapolis to San Francisco, the route would have cost about $700 - still $240 cheaper than a ticket from Minneapolis to Honolulu. AIRFARE CHEAP Other strategies You can use several strategies (see accompanying article) to cut the cost of your next trip. One is simply to use a good travel agent. In planning my most recent trip - to see the Big Ten champion Northwestern Wildcats take on USC in the Rose Bowl - I found some of the best fares by calling travel agents. The lowest fare from my computer was $425. The lowest fare through a travel agent was $364. AIRFARE CHEAP That's because computerized reservation systems generally don't offer advice. A good travel agent will suggest alternatives to lower your fare; most reservation systems just process your requests. Another downside of online reservation systems is that they list only published fares on regularly scheduled aircraft. They don't list discounted "consolidator fares" or money-saving charters. AIRFARE CHEAP Consolidators buy blocks of tickets from airlines and then resell them at a discount. Consolidator tickets are for scheduled flights. A travel agency can often get consolidator tickets for you. Charter flights are generally on smaller carriers such as Sun Country or American Trans Air, and they are seasonal: Mexico and other hot spots in winter, Europe in summer, for example. AIRFARE CHEAP To get the savings, your plans must be built around the charter schedule; charters to some popular destinations run only once a week. If I had wanted to fly on a charter, I could have cut the cost of my trip to Pasadena to $299. But I would have had to stay for an entire week to get the lower fare..... Find an airfare cheap here /cheap airfares home |