Airfare Deals

Fewer seats, higher fuel costs make finding ticket bargains more difficult

What's your trick for finding low airfares?

Do you scour the online discount fare finders first? Book Web-only specials directly from a carrier's site well in advance?

Or gamble by naming your price for extra savings through Priceline.com?

With airfares rising as carriers grapple with sky-high fuel prices, bargain hunters have even more incentive to search for deals online.

Prices for domestic tickets are the highest since FareCompare.com began tracking them over three years ago, said Rick Seaney, the company's CEO.

"You have to be more pro-active about when you're going to fly," he said. "There's really not many last-minute deals anymore."

As legacy airlines continue to cut capacity, in many cases replacing large planes with regional jets, demand for the shrinking number of available seats is driving fares up - a trend that will continue this year, according to an American Express forecast. Even discount carriers, which have grown exponentially in recent years, have scaled back growth.

So do your homework.

Among the maze of discount airfare search sites that have sprouted on the Internet, a smart first stop is Farecast.com, which helps travelers gauge the best time to buy. Unlike standard travel sites, Farecast.com plugs historic pricing data into models developed by a computer scientist to predict whether fares to your destination will rise or fall. It is accurate just under 75 percent of the time, according to a recent audit performed for the company.

You can sign up for e-mail alerts and then pounce on any fare drop - which often lasts less than 48 hours, Farecast said.

Kayak.com is another top airfare aggregator, which means it searches under one roof hundreds of travel sites, including traditional discount providers such as Expedia.com, Orbitz.com or Cheaptickets.com. You'll find Kayak is one of the most useful tools out there. And it's merging with rival SideStep.com, another fancy "meta-search" discount provider.

While online consolidators like Expedia let you directly purchase tickets from them, Kayak and SideStep only ferret out the best rates for you. But both are fee-free, user-friendly and connect you straight to your chosen airline or discount site posting the cheapest fares. "You get an idea of what fares are out there," airline travel expert Terry Trippler said of these aggregators. "When you get what you consider is a fair price, then buy it."