With oil prices high, most plane fares are high.
You're also getting stuck with all sorts of charges from your box lunch etc...
But if you are patient and diligent and you shop and compare, you can still find some bargains.
Here's the March 14, 2008 report:
On her blog called the Travel Gal, Cindy Carlsson of St. Paul, Minn., shares stories and photos from trips to Botswana, Ecuador, Cambodia and Thailand, but it was the expense of a potential trip to Berlin this summer that finally put the brakes on her wanderlust.
"We looked at the cost of the air tickets and the exchange rate and decided we couldn't do it," she said.
Fuel surcharges and increasing demand have steadily pushed the cost of tickets up. Travelocity estimates that prices rose on average by 7 percent last year; on some flights, the rise was much higher than that. Ticket price is only one measure of the increased cost of flying; passengers also paid extra for their box lunches, their exit row and aisle seats, and on United at least, their second checked bags.
There are ways to fight back.
Carlsson is a good case in point. After giving up on Berlin, she patiently monitored airfares. When Northwest, promoting its direct flights to Paris, offered a $2,100 deal on a weeklong hotel-air package for two, Carlsson snagged it. She and her husband, Lane Phillips, are going to France in May.
"Doing the research, putting in some work, that's what being an informed consumer is about," said Erik Torkells, editor of Budget Travel magazine.
Today, most of that work can be done on the Internet. Booking tools that once were available only to travel agents are now available to anyone. At sites such as kayak.com, consumers can compare fares day-to-day from multiple airlines, getting a clearer picture of how pricing changes over time. At farecast.com, they can look at graphs that show price fluctuations over time, and predict when fares will rise or fall. Airfarewatchdog.com sends consumers weekly or daily updates on low fares from any chosen airport.
Each site has advantages and disadvantages, meaning you need to use more than one to get the best fare.
Even with thorough research, consumers may need to make compromises to get real bargains.
"Flexibility is key," said Kellie Pelletier of kayak.com, an "aggregator" site that searches multiple Web sites for the best deals. "If you can fly when others aren't, you'll get the best deal."
That can mean planning your European vacation in winter; fares and hotel rates are much lower then, and many of the reasons travelers like Europe - restaurants, museums and other cultural attractions - are just as appealing in February as they are in June, but with shorter lines.
On the other hand, no one wants to go to the Caribbean in July. "There are reasons the off-season is the off-season," said Torkells of Budget Travel.
Flexibility can also mean hunting for fares when the airlines are releasing sale fares and trying to fill up planes on short notice.
"If there is a time of week when you have the best chance to get a cheap fare it's Tuesday or Wednesday," said Terry Trippler, a Minneapolis-based airline expert. But he said those cheap fares are harder to find.
"I don't see many more public price increases this year - it's bad publicity for the airlines," he said. But he said that the airlines are making fewer seats available at the lowest fares, increasing revenue without sounding alarms about rising prices.
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STEP-BY-STEP GUIDE TO FINDING THE BEST AIRFARES
START EARLY
The more time you allow and the more you understand the market, the better your odds for finding the best price. "First you have to figure out what a good airfare is to Helsinki or wherever you're going," said Budget Travel magazine editor Erik Torkells. "Then when you see it, you grab it." Farecast.com presents charts that show past price trends for a particular route, and predict (with about 75 percent accuracy, according to the site) when prices will be lowest in the future. Bestfares.com is another great site for fares and consumer news.
EMPLOY A WATCHDOG
Airfarewatchdog.com is a nifty site that will send out daily or weekly alerts about most bargain fares from a given airport. It's an independent site, and no airlines are omitted. For bargain hunters, it presents an invaluable snapshot of what's cheap and when. Worth noting: Airfarewatchdog.com tracks airline "promo-code" fares that other sites don't yet catch.
Travelocity.com and some other booking sites offer an option to send e-mail alerts when airfares on chosen routes drop or rise significantly; this is also a good trend-watching tool. Smartertravel.com has a feature that compiles bargain fares from MSP at a glance.
JOIN AIRLINES' SITES
More and more airlines are using promotional rates and e-mail offers to lure traffic to their Web sites. By signing up for e-mail alerts at your commonly used airlines, you get notice of these fares that you might not otherwise find.
BROAD SEARCHES
Kayak.com is my favorite basic tool for researching and booking airfares. This site quickly checks almost all airlines' fares and presents them at a glance, along with charts that show the price trend for that route. It also offers an option to check rates three days before and after your preferred dates.
Flying legs of a journey overseas? Dohop.com lets you check fares from Stuttgart, Germany, to Prague or Bangkok to Mumbai, India.
USE YOUR MILES
Industry observers (and many casual consumers) agree that frequent flier seats are harder and harder to find; in essence they are losing value over time; use your miles sooner rather than later.
Northwest is aggressively enticing WorldPerks members to use their miles to pay down the cost of tickets. "Sometimes it's a great deal," said fare guru Terry Trippler. "Sometimes they're not so great." As an example, my spouse cut the rate of a flight to St. Louis from $425 to $225 by including 10,000 of her frequent flier miles in the deal.
PICKY ABOUT PACKAGES
Right now, some air-hotel packages to Europe are as cheap as air alone would be. You sacrifice your lodging choice, but gain value. Packages can be found at most airlines' sites as well as the bigger booking engines, such as orbitz.com and expedia.com. Cheaptickets.com is appealing to the YouTube set with a weekly video (released Tuesdays at about 10 a.m.) that gives a quick rundown on good package deals.
But be alert: With a little research you can pick a clean, safe hotel on your own. A decent hotel room in most of Latin America and Southeast Asia can be had for under $40. You won't find deals like that on the airlines' sites.
CAVEATS
Being your own travel agent poses some hazards. On complex routes and unusual destinations a travel agent can still save time and money and offer an extra layer of protection and help if things go wrong. Also remember that when you book multiple legs of a journey on different airlines, you have no protection when one leg lands late and your next plane leaves without you. You'll have to pony up for another ticket.
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