Finding Cheap Tickets

From a cunning linguist:

Anyway, if you have access to the Internet, and no laws prevent the air carriers from selling to you directly over the Internet, then you have the freedom to shop around.

One should check with the websites of the air carriers themselves. Just plug in your origin and destination and you'll see what airlines have direct, non-stop, and connecting flights. Easy as that.

Then, try visiting the websites of those companies and see how much their tickets cost. Be creative in visiting these websites. For example, I needed to book a domestic flight within Peru, flying from Lima to Cuzco and back. If I went to the US version of LAN.com, I could get a quote and buy a ticket. Obviously, I bought my ticket using the Peruvian site.

Now why is this discrepancy in ticket prices? Both tickets were economy seats. However, there are different fare classes. The fare class available to the Peruvian site was not available to the US site. One can also use websites that act as search engines with regard to plane tickets. Once it finds a fare, if you like it, it will provide a link for you to go to the vendor, say, another online travel agent like Orbitz or Travelocity, or to the website of the air carrier themselves. You don't buy the ticket from Kayak, you buy the ticket from the vendors.

There are also a number of online travel agents that are available, such as Orbitz, Travelocity, and Expedia. In Orbitz at least, you have the option to search for a flight, and choose it leg by leg. Of course, you can choose a return flight as a whole. For example, say you're traveling from New York to Tokyo. You will be presented with a number of options of flight connections going there and going back. You have the option to choose and select both flights together, or separately. I usually select them separately, due to the fact that sometimes, the resulting options once I select them separately give me a lower quote than the original quote if I chose them together. The options I was given hovered around 1,000 USD. I selected a return leg, and so the screen popped up a new set of outbound legs. And there, I found a flight that only costs me 800 USD, knocking off 200 USD to the original selection.

Aside from the tips mentioned above, one can also travel by means of the low-cost carriers.