At Airfarewatchdog.com, we recently sent out fare alerts for flights from several major hub airports (such as Miami, Newark, Dallas, Denver, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Washington and Salt Lake City) to Honolulu for tax-included fares as low as $400 round-trip -- even for peak summer travel.
And a ton of $200 tax-included summertime fares in many markets popped up for only a few hours not long ago. Airtran recently sold seats from Baltimore to Los Angeles on nonstop flights for peak July and August travel for $296 round-trip including tax, hundreds less than what other airlines were charging. (Fares from neighboring Washington, D.C., to Los Angeles were much higher, so here's a good example of how being flexible in your travel plans can save money).
So although summer airfares are on average higher, here's how to increase your chances of snagging a deal.
Before you do anything, sign up for free airfare alerts
I'm a fan of this service, obviously, as founder of Airfarewatchdog, but seriously, why do all the work hunting down a low airfare yourself when you can have someone else do it for free?
Many airfare search and listing sites, such as Travelocity.com, Yapta.com, TripAdvisor.com/Flights, Bing.com/travel (and, of course, Airfarewatchdog.com) offer e-mailed airfare alerts when prices go down. This is just a partial list; do a browser search for "airfare alerts" to see what's available.
Get e-mail from your airlines
Next, sign up for e-mails and frequent flier programs from as many airlines as you can tolerate. Sure, you already get enough e-mail, but you want to fly cheaply, right?
Here's why: Airlines are trying to woo customers to book directly with them by offering special deals when you sign up for their newsletters and e-mail lists. One way they do this is by offering "promo code" deals that are redeemable only on their websites.