How to Find Cheap Airfare to the Sasquatch Festival

The Sasquatch Music Festival site itself is something to behold – beautiful surroundings and a natural amphitheatre-like setting make it seem like it was meant to host music festivals. The natural beauty of the Columbia Gorge is an impressive backdrop, but the festival’s remote-ness doesn’t make it easy to plan a trip for. A festival of this size can’t really be held in the middle of a big city, it’s true – it just means you’ll need to do a bit more research when you’re looking for travel bargains.

Luckily, the Sasquatch Music Festival takes place early enough in the year that it’s not quite in the high summer travel season – that fact alone will help you save on airfare. But the festival also happens to fall on Memorial Day weekend – making it a popular time to travel in general. So you’ll need a few more tricks up your sleeve to save even more, and that’s where we come in.

The tips below will help you find cheap airfare to the Sasquatch Festival, but many of them will also help you find cheap airfare anytime and anywhere. These tips tend to be useful no matter where you’re going, but they’re also particularly useful when you’re traveling to a specific event or around a holiday when lots of other people will be flying at the same time or to the same place. Like a music festival, for instance.

>> The Sasquatch Music Festival is May 25-29, 2012. 

Check All Area Airports

As mentioned, the Sasquatch Music Festival doesn’t take place in (or near, for that matter) a major city with a big airport. The closest big airport is Sea-Tac, between Seattle and Tacoma, but that’s definitely not your only option when it comes to flying to Sasquatch. And since you’ll end up needing to drive at least part of the way to the festival anyway, checking other airports within a reasonable driving distance can be a way to save you money on your ticket.

When you’re familiar with a particular area, you may know already that certain airports have more regular traffic from budget airlines, or regularly offer lower prices on airfare than their neighbors. But if you’re not familiar with an area, you won’t know those helpful tidbits – which is why it’s important to look at airfare from all airports in the vicinity.

Don’t Overlook Budget Airlines

There are big airline names that most people – even if they’re not frequent travelers – are familiar with. But there are also smaller airlines that aren’t household names but are well worth looking into for potentially lower airfares. It all depends on where you’re coming from and where you’re going. You’ll be aware of the regional carriers and budget airlines that fly out of your home airport, most likely, but do you know which budget airlines fly into the airports where you’re going?

Some budget airlines like Southwest or jetBlue have pretty extensive route networks, but others serve a significantly smaller area of the country. This means you’re less apt to know them by name or know to look for them in an airfare search – but smaller regional airlines sometimes have some of the best prices for their area. You can find out which airlines serve the airport you’re flying into by looking up the airline list on that airport’s website, or by checking out which budget airlines cover the area you’re flying to. And don’t forget to look on those airlines’ websites as well as the airfare booking sites.

>> More information on budget airlines in the United States

Look at Alternate Travel Dates & Times

Probably the best way to give yourself more of a shot at getting cheap airfare to the Sasquatch Festival – or on any trip you’re booking – is to be flexible with your travel plans. That’s tougher to do when you’re talking about traveling to a particular event like a music festival (rather than planning a vacation you can schedule at any time), but you can still be a little flexible with your itinerary.

There tend to be certain days of the week and times of the day that are routinely cheaper than others when it comes to airline tickets. It’s not 100% of the time, of course, but it’s true more often than not, so it’s worth looking. Cheaper days to fly tend to be Wednesdays, Saturdays, and Tuesdays – and cheaper times to fly are those super-early morning flights or super-late night flights (including red-eye flights). If you can’t change your flight date enough to fly on a Wednesday or Tuesday, at least make sure you’re looking at the cheapest times to fly.

Keep in mind that many airfare booking sites have a box you can check that says “my dates are flexible,” or other similar language – check this box and that site will look 2-3 days on either side of your target travel dates to see if there are cheaper flights nearby that you could take.

Do Your Research

When you’re traveling at a popular time or to a popular destination, that means the airlines are going to have every reason to raise prices on airfare. It makes sense, of course, and although you may pay more for airfare to Seattle right before Sasquatch than you might pay for a similar ticket a few months before, that doesn’t mean you’ll have to pay full price.

One tool that many airfare booking sites have that can be really useful to you is email notifications. You can sign up to get emailed when the prices on a particular route change, so you’ll know when airfare from your home airport into Seattle (and any other airports you’re looking at for Sasquatch) go up or down. Knowing how the fares are fluctuating is important when you’re ready to book your flight, so you’ll know whether the price you’re looking at is comparable to what the trends have been. Not only that, getting those alerts will give you a chance to act quickly when you see a great deal or notice that the prices have ticked up slightly.

photo by JASON ANFINSEN