How to Find Cheap Airfare on Weekend Travel
by Jessica
April 23rd, 2010
Some people see the summer as the perfect excuse to use up all their accrued vacation days and hit the road for as long as possible. Other people prefer to break travel up into smaller bite-sized pieces scattered throughout the year. But even if you fall into the latter camp, it’s hard to resist the siren song of summer travel when there are so many three-day weekends between now and autumn.
The problem comes when you start looking for cheap airfare for weekend travel. It doesn’t take long to realize that weekend travel is when airfare tends to be at its peak. So can you save money on your flights for a weekend trip? Or do you just give up and skip the weekend getaways entirely?
Although airfare does trend upward on certain days of the week, there are a few things you can do to avoid paying too high a price for your airline ticket – even if you do fly on the more expensive days. In this article we’ll take a look at some tips to help you find cheap airfare for weekend travel – whether you’re thinking of a weekend getaway on one of this summer’s three-day weekends, or you’re looking for a weekend escape at any time of the year.
Do Your Research
When it comes to finding cheap airfare these days, it’s important to do a little homework before you hit the “buy” button. This is true no matter when you’re traveling, but even more important if you’re traveling at a busy time of year – which includes essentially the whole summer, but especially those three-day weekend national holidays.
The sooner you start looking at prices on flights, the better off you’ll be when it comes to actually buying tickets. You’ll be more informed as to what the price range on a given ticket is, and you’ll be better able to spot an airfare site or an agent that seems like they’re trying to gouge you or are offering a killer deal. Many airfare sites make this research easier by letting you sign up for email alerts on certain specific flights – they’ll send you a note when the price of that flight goes up or down, usually by an amount you specify.
A further tip here is that once you see a great deal on the trip you want to take, scoop it up. Don’t wait too long or it’ll be gone.
Fly at the Cheaper Times of the Day
You’ll read on many travel sites – including this one, in fact – that there are certain days of the week when it tends to be cheaper to fly. Those days, however (Wednesday, Tuesday, and Saturday), aren’t conducive to taking a weekend trip. And if you’re limited in terms of flexibility at work (i.e. you can’t swap working on a weekend for taking Tuesday and Wednesday off), then those cheaper days to fly won’t really help you.
But in addition to cheaper days for airfare, there are also cheaper times to fly during every day. Probably not surprisingly, the cheapest flights are usually first thing in the morning – the ones you may have to set a couple of alarms to not miss. Other cheap flight times tend to be the latest departures of the night, including red-eye flights.
These are, after all, times when most people would prefer to still be sleeping – or already in their vacation destination – so they’re less popular flights. Even if you can’t switch the day you fly, you do have flexibility with the time you fly – and it could save you quite a bit on airfare.
Look at Last-Minute Weekend Travel Deals
If you’re of the mindset that you’re not particular about where you go, just so long as you get out of town and away from your routine for a few days, then you’re ideally suited to scoring a last-minute weekend travel deal. There are a few sites that seem to specialize in these kinds of last-minute deals, and the key is to sign up on their email notification lists and then open the weekly emails as soon as you get them – to grab the great deals before they’re sold out.
One of our favorite weekly emails comes from SmarterTravel.com – you sign up with your home airport, so the email you get has only deals from that airport listed. They usually come out on a Tuesday, and then by late Thursday or early Friday you’re on your way somewhere. Another way to find last-minute deals – without signing up for any kind of email update – is to regularly check the “DREAM!” tab of the BootsnAll Travel Deals page. Plug in your departure airport and you’ll get a list of what’s available right now.
Look around on your favorite booking sites to find similar last-minute notifications for travel deals and you could be on your way to lots of cheap weekend travel deals – with the added fun of not knowing where you’re going until a few days before you leave.
Check Budget Airlines
No matter where you’re thinking of going for your weekend travel getaway, be sure you’re covering all your bases in terms of how to fly there. Sure, you’re looking at the big airlines – but one way to find cheap airfare for weekend travel (or any travel, for that matter) is to look at the budget airlines, too.
Some of the budget airlines may have familiar names, but when you don’t see them turn up in your routine searches for airfare you might just assume they don’t fly that route or they don’t have any seats left. The truth is that some of them don’t provide their fares to the big airfare search sites – you have to go to the airlines’ individual sites to find their ticket prices.
In other words, after you’ve used your usual methods for finding cheap airfare – but before you buy a ticket – be sure to surf over to the websites of budget airlines like Southwest Airlines, jetBlue, Frontier, Spirit Airlines, and Horizon Air to make sure you’re not missing out on a great low fare.
>> Read more about budget airlines in the United States, budget airlines that fly to Mexico, budget airlines that fly to Canada, and budget airlines that fly to Europe
Consider Vacation Packages
Even if you’re not normally the “package trip” kind of traveler, looking for vacation packages to save money overall on weekend travel is a good idea – especially if you’re having trouble finding deals otherwise. Vacation packages are going to be more common in popular destinations, but no matter where you’re thinking of going it doesn’t hurt to check out the website of the official tourism board for that city or state. You just never know what you’re going to find there in terms of vacation package offerings.
Traveling for a specific holiday?
We’ve got some holiday-specific travel advice for the biggest three-day weekends of the summer, as well as some general tips to finding deals on summer travel, so be sure to read these articles for more money-saving ideas that are specific to when you’ll be traveling:
photo by mysza831
