How To Let Other People Subsidize Your Travel

I/We often get questions about the various travel deals we've taken advantage of in recent years. While I can't share everything that involves finding amazing deals without writing an eight-part novel, here's an abbreviated version of some of the resources I use and what I pay attention to.

The whole process is a lot more complicated than just going to a website and booking something. You have to spend time learning how to use resources, what to watch for, keep a close tab on where deals pop up (since the really awesome ones disappear within hours), etc. It really is a game of not just knowing where to look, but trying to keep a regular pulse on what's going on, watching trends, and being ready if/when something pops up. If you're not at least a little bit obsessive, you're unlikely to find great deals very often (but you can still do better than the average Joe).

Some sites I use:
Great general resource for all things involving traveling and deals: Flyer Talk. You can find almost anything pertinent here if you poke around, I highly recommend it.

I specifically like to follow their Mileage Runs, Budget Travel, and American Airlines Forums. The first two often give you a sense for what carriers and routes are hot.

To help find and refine deals, I use ITA Software's search engine. It looks like every other search engine, but it's insanely powerful, as you can narrow down what carriers you want to look for, specific routes, best fares on every day over a month, etc. I suggest reading the help guide and playing around with it, especially the month-long search feature. Just know that you can't actually book through ITA, but it does let you check routes and carrier options faster than any other site, and then you can go to the carrier's site (or priceline, whatever) and pick up the deal.

Farecompare also has a nice feature that sends you email alerts when deals get filed according to whatever you are interested in. The only catch is that not all of them seem to be bookable, I have no idea why that is. They also have all sorts of email updates, twitter updates, etc.

Kayak's buzz feature is kinda neat, it shows you the best deals to various regions on all carriers. Unfortunately it's only fares found by others, so it's not super-robust and not always current.

Yahoo has a site that let's you see the best deals to/from your home city. Just change the last three letters in the web browser to your home airport (i.e. ORD).


Finding great deals isn't just about being diligent, it's also about being flexible in where you want to go. For example, if you're not pegged to particular dates/times, and you don't necessarily know where you want to go, you'll find you're much freer to find and analyze great deals.

Also, I'd offer the rule of thumb that the truly crazy stuff (like Chicago-Moscow for $275) comes up roughly once a quarter depending on where you live. But on a week-to-week basis there's always something good floating around out there. Remember, a great deal is usually no more than $.04/mile traveled (and the best ones are closer to $.02).

Finally, learning how mileage programs work for various carriers is critical, because deals are even better when you can earn lots of miles (read: free tickets). And watching the airlines' mileage program deals is important too, because if you can cash in those miles you earned at better rates, you're making your dollars go even further. It's not a perpetual motion machine, but you can really learn to travel for soooooooo much cheaper than you ever thought possible if you're buying smartly, earning miles smartly, and cashing in miles smartly. Oh, and you might get to see some amazing parts of the world in the process =)

Happy travels.