I booked a flight last week.  In three weeks, I’ll be travelling 2700 miles from one coast (Virginia Beach, VA) to the other (Orange County, CA).  Of course with the recent surge of oil prices and disastrous airline market, I was ready to pay a small premium on top of my standard $500 flight. That’s when an article caught my eye during my morning ritual of browsing finance and money websites. Seemed simple enough. So I employed a few of the tips that I got off CNN Money and combined them with some of my own, and set out to find the cheapest plane ticket I could. The result after taxes and fees? $320! Awesome, right? Here are 4 tips that you can incorporate to successfully find a cheap flight:

1.  Use the internet!  The main two websites I use to find plane tickets are kayak and farecast. Kayak is an airfare search engine that searches hundreds of travel sites (including orbitz and travelocityetc) and finds you the cheapest airfare.  The reason I really like this website is because I can do all my research on one site and it is great for customizing.  I can add/delete multiple airports, travel dates, times and more at the touch of a button.  Farecast has recently adopted a very similar format to kayak but with one key addition.  Farecast incorporates a “buy” or “wait” suggestion based on historical prices and data between the two airports.  It also has a confidence percentage based on the certainty of the suggestion as well as an estimated price increase or decrease to come.  For example, if I type in Norfolk (ORF) to Los Angeles (LAX), it’ll tell me that I should “buy” with 75% confidence. 

2.  Pick off peak days to travel.  Monday and Friday are peak travel days for business travelers and are more expensive.  However, Tuesday and Wednesday are generally slow days for airlines and it is reflected in the price.  Of course, sometimes you have no control over what days you fly, but red eye flights are usually discounted as well.

3.  Buy at the right time of the day.  We all know that airfare changes constantly as supply and demand fluctuates.  Airlines generally change their fares three times a day.  The best time to check prices is early in the morning since airlines try to leave the market as open as possible.  Another great time to check is at 5 PM.  If seats haven’t sold throughout the day, airlines start to aggressively cut prices around 5 PM to try to sell off those seats.

4.  Look for package deals.  If you’re going on vacation and you know that you’ll need a rental car and hotel on top of your flight, why not book a package deal?  Package deals are usually attractively priced.  But did you know that sometimes airfare + hotel + rental car package deals are cheaper than just the flight alone?

What tips do you have to find cheap airfare?