How to Find Cheap Airfare to New Orleans Jazz Fest

by Jessica

March 29th, 2011

Unless you’re lucky enough to live within driving distance of New Orleans, the first order of business upon planning a trip to see the popular annual music festival known as New Orleans Jazz Fest is to find yourself a cheap flight. Airfare is almost always the biggest part of any travel budget, so the more you can cut down on that expense the more you’ll save on your trip overall. And as we all know, the more you save on airfare, the more po’boys you can buy. Or something like that.

Flying to New Orleans for Jazz Fest isn’t usually as expensive as flying to the city for its most famous festival, Mardi Gras – but it’s not unheard of for airlines to raise their prices on flights to New Orleans right around Jazz Fest. They know more people than usual are traveling to the event, and when demand is higher it’s the ideal time (in the eye of the airline) to raise ticket prices.

The good news is that Jazz Fest occurs before the height of the busy summer travel season, so prices on airline tickets aren’t quite at their peak yet – and if you do a bit of homework before you buy, you can avoid paying the highest prices for your trip. Here are some tips to help you save money on your airfare for New Orleans Jazz Fest.

>> New Orleans Jazz Fest in 2012 is April 27 – May 6.

Be Flexible

Perhaps the most important thing you can do to make sure you don’t overpay for airfare is to keep your plans as flexible as you can at the start. Because the prices on tickets can fluctuate throughout the week and even by the hour, if your search is too narrow to begin with you could be missing out on a much lower fare that’s a day or two away from your initial target.

Luckily, most airfare search engines these days will do the hard work for you – all you need to do is check the box that says “my dates are flexible” (or something akin to that) when you enter your travel dates, and the site will search for fares within a range of 2-3 days on either side of your travel dates. Then you’ll be able to see if simply by changing your dates by a day or two might save you money.

Learn When Flights are Cheaper

To get an added advantage when you’re starting your airfare search, it helps to know when flights tend to be cheaper to begin with. These days and times aren’t set in stone, and things can (and do) change – especially around big events or holidays – but if you begin your search with these things in mind you may find those cheaper fares more quickly.

Usually the cheaper days to fly each week are Wednesday, Tuesday, and Saturday – and the cheaper times to fly are the earliest flights each day and late night departures (including red eye flights).

Look at Budget Airlines

Travelers in the U.S. may be familiar with some of the dicount airlines in the country, but some of them serve smaller regions – so if you don’t live in that region you may not know their names. Anytime you’re flying, it makes sense to check out what budget carriers fly to your destination and whether it’s possible to use them. If you’ve got a direct flight to New Orleans on a major carrier, it may not be worth it – but if you have a layover along the way anyway, why not see if you can switch to a budget airline for the last section of the trip?

Some of the budget airlines that fly to New Orleans include AirTran, Frontier, jetBlue, Southwest, and WestJet – so if your trip can include any of these airlines for all or part of your flight, you might save quite a bit.

Check Alternate Airports

This last tip doesn’t work for every destination, and it’s not ideal for New Orleans, but if you’re trying to get as many saving opportunities as possible it never hurts to check on the cost of flights to other airports that are near the city you’re planning to visit.

Obviously the closest airport to New Orleans is the city’s main airport, Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport (MSY), but if you want to check on fares to airports that are within an hour or two from New Orleans here are some other options to look at: