How to Find Cheaper Airfares and Fly For Less in 2008

With oil prices at all time highs, airline travel is set to become more expensive in the future. Here are a few tips to help keep down your airfare costs:
1. Flexibility - Be flexible with your travel dates and try to book your airline ticket in advance to get the less expensive fares. Many online booking engines such as Orbitz and Travelocity have flexible date search tools which are very helpful in tracking down the lowest available airfare over a set period of time. Always select "lowest fare" when doing an airfare search online - choosing the "fully flexible" fare will bring up the highest full fare price.
2. Fly Mid-week - You should avoid peak business travel days like Monday and Friday and try to fly during mid-week. Add a Saturday night stay to reduce the fare further. Some agents also advise booking mid-week as that is when new airfares are added into the databases - giving you greater choice.
3. Departure Airports - Always experiment with nearby departure airport for your trip - this may sometimes throw out a much lower fare. Many online booking engines such as Orbitz will allow you to include prices from nearby airports in your airfare search.
4. To Hub or Not To Hub - Flying through a hub connection airport is often cheaper than flying non-stop - but weigh up whether any saving justifies the extra inconvenience.
5. Fly Red-Eye - Good deals can often be found booking overnight 'red-eye' flights.
6. Cover the GDS's - Check the price of your flight online with a number of major booking engines to ensure you cover all the GDS's (Global Distribution Systems) - these are the 4 primary mainframe databases which power the airfare market worldwide - Sabre, Worldspan, Galileo and Amadeus. Some online agents are biased towards a single GDS so you will want to cover all your bases by checking other agents. Then double check any prices found directly at the airline websites.
7. Aggregate - Use an online aggregator like Kayak to help you check airfares from multiple sources.
8. Consolidators - Phone your travel agent to see if they can beat your online quote. Also try using a specialist consolidator who will have access to many unpublished airfares not available elsewhere. Generally, using a consolidator is optimal when booking around 4 to 8 weeks in advance.
9. Special Offers - Take advantage of occasional special offer deals that come onto the market. Get on the mailing lists of your favored airlines. If you find an excellent airfare then book it immediately - it may not be there long! For example, airlines introducing the new Airbus A380 Super Jumbo like Singapore Airlines and Qantas have offered some very good initial deals.
10. Invest in Your Travel Knowledge - There are a few services and guides available which will get you up to speed with the airfare market. Knowing some insider tricks can really help, especially with business class and first class tickets which can sometimes be picked up for little more than economy prices.