Where the Airline Bargains Really Are [and Aren't]

Feb. 14, 2006 — -- The airline industry has achieved a very dubious honor in the nearly 30 years of chaos since deregulation: We've managed to devalue the public's perception of the value of our product to nearly zero, even though it really does cost something to produce.

Now, come on and admit it, because I will, too. Don't you get just the least bit irritated when the airfare for that mini-vacation you saw advertised at $249 comes up at more than $1,000 on your computer screen a week later when you're ready to buy it? I mean, what the heck happened? Do they want to sell me a ticket to London (or Cabo or the Bahamas), or don't they? Maybe I'll just use frequent flyer miles and fly for nothing!

See what I mean? We have a national attitude now that runs something like this: How dare they charge $700 for tickets we could buy last week for $249, or with miles for nothing at all?

Truth is, that $249 fare was never realistic, and it probably cost the airline closer to $400 to provide that seat. If you're acutely aware of that, you can consistently find the real bargains by spotting them the instant they pop up, rather than being rudely surprised when the truly low fare you thought was normal takes a big hike back to reality.

The confusion factor in buying airline flights is more than understandable, in fact, it's become depressingly normal. While the technology of flying is 21st century, the pricing of airline tickets is right out of the 1870s Wild West: unprincipled, chaotic, illogical, and based on whatever the market (and sometimes just plain trickery) will allow.

That $249 price you saw? It probably applied to fewer than 200 seats spread over a three-week period, seats that were alarmingly empty in the reservations computer of that airline. When the people who administer the so-called "yield-management" programs for that airline were alerted, they got busy and created an instant bargain to fill those seats for any revenue they could bring in. You just didn't jump fast enough. But worse, it nudged you into believing that the usual price in that market for that type of flight was somewhere around $249.

To get the best airfare prices -- prices far below the cost of the product -- you have to do some rather consistent research. What I recommend (and what I do) is maintain a list of places you would like to go in the not-so-distant future, and periodically take a look at the prevailing prices, keeping firmly in mind that summer rates for overseas travel will be much higher, winter rates for winter resorts will stay high, and in general last-minute travel will cost you dearly.

Everyone by now knows that one of the few benefits that hasn't been taken away from airline employees is the ability to fly on some sort of pass on their own carrier when there are empty seats and the door is about to close (no reservations, in other words). When you live in that situation and simply don't fly unless you learn how to pick less-then-full flights, you become very aware of what days and hours and routes are subject to the highest demand for seats. Turns out, those same perceptive skills are the ones you need to find the best bargains.

If you gain a solid feeling for what flights and routes are less than full at what times of the year, you'll find where the bargains are. Those are the flights that yield-management gurus are most likely to discount.

Fortunately, you don't need any special tools to practice this arcane art -- beyond a computer and knowledge of how to surf the Web, that is. First, go to one of the major travel sites such as Expedia or Travelocity and enter your desired route (Point A to Point B) as a round trip, with dates that approximate the range you might be considering.

While each site has its own look and feel and boxes to be filled, they all provide a chance to comparison shop among flights going in the same direction. When you go directly to some airline Web sites (such as British Airways), you'll find that some actually show you blocks of days and weeks with color-coding of the highest and lowest fares by day to make it easier to understand the ebb and flow of the market. (Always remember, they're tuning the fares to the market and the laws of supply and demand literally 24/7.) By paging forward through such a Web schedule, you can begin to get a feel not only for how full they are at certain times of the month, week and year, but when you're more than three weeks out, you begin to get a feel for where they're setting the bottom price.

For instance, moving from late winter into summer for any particular route, you'll clearly see the average "lowest" fares rising week by week until they reach the peak travel season, when the so-called lowest fares for advance purchase coach are relatively high. There still may be bargains even in the high season of a particular route, but on average an international flight that would have cost $375 round trip in February when the airline needed the customers will probably set you back around $1,000 in June, when they've got plenty.

Yes, there will be obvious variations between Wednesdays and Sundays, and around big holidays (such as Christmas and Thanksgiving). Even when the bottom fare seems very high, a close daily watch on the targeted airline's Web site may uncover a special bargain that you'll have to be ready to pounce on to secure (and then with all the penalty-for-change problems). The good news is that there really is a huge variation in price on most competitive routes at any given time of year, and thus the more you can plan ahead and still have some flexibility in your range of dates (a tall order for most of us), the more you can ferret out the best prices from airlines that are getting a bit desperate to sell seats on a particular flight.

Rule No. 2 (that's really unfair since I didn't give you a Rule No. 1) is that you should never get lazy and depend on just one Web site, no matter how convenient they try to make it. Yes, Expedia/Travelocity/Orbitz/etc. are soup-to-nuts operations, but each airline runs its own Web site and until you know what's being offered there in comparison to the big packagers, you won't have the whole picture (or necessarily the best price).

Also, don't forget that Southwest Airlines is never represented or even mentioned on those big sites (Southwest won't play the game or pay the commissions), so you should add the individual Web addresses of Southwest and any other so-called, low-cost carrier not represented on the big sites to your search routine every time. In fact, sometimes Southwest's (or JetBlue's, etc.) regular fare is not only equal to or better than the advance purchase fare offered by the other guys, it may have fewer restrictions.

In a perfect world (which occupies the same fictional territory as the so-called "reasonable man" we use as a test in the law), the American public would have said: "Enough already!" to the insanity of the fare structures that seldom bear any relationship to mileage flown. In the mid-'90s, American Airlines tried to change that, but none of the other carriers would follow its lead, and eventually even American had to return to the crazy whatever-we-can-get-whenever-we-can-get-it pricing system that afflicts it -- and us -- today. Since Congress is disinclined to interfere and the airlines absolutely are not going to change themselves, we're stuck with what we have. But if you'll keep firmly in mind why they price their product the way they do, it will lead you to a consistent ability to take advantage of their folly, and save a lot of money and angst in the process.