How to Get the Cheapest Flight Every Single Time

How to Get the Cheapest Flight Every Single Time
January 3, 2007 at 1:11 pm · Filed under web 2.0, travel
Over the last year or two I’ve done my fair share of flying and have refined my methodology of making sure that I always get the cheapest airfare available. I wish I could tell you “use this one service,” but in reality it doesn’t work that way. Since there are so many variables at play, you have to run searches at a number of sites. So how do you get the best airfare?

Aggregators:
Farechase
Kayak
Sidestep
Farecast
Independent:
Southwest
Booking Engines:
Orbitz
Travelocity
Expedia
Cheaptickets
Hotwire
Priceline
Qixo
Major Airlines:
Airtran
Alaska
America West
American Airlines
Continental
Delta
Frontier
Jet Blue
Midwest Express
Northwest
Sun Country
Spirit
U.S. Airways
United Airlines
International Airlines:
SkyScanner
Momondo
Mobissimo
Trabber
There are basically three types of airfare websites: 1. Aggregators (ex: Kayak) that check airfares for many different airlines. They do not charge a fee but instead rely on affiliate hotel deals and on-site advertising like Adsense to make their money. These are historically the best bets. 2. Traditional booking engines (ex: Orbitz) that check multiple websites and take a small fee ~$6 in addition to the price of the flight. They process the sale on behalf of the airline and keep the fee. 3. Airline’s own websites (ex: JetBlue). If you find a flight on booking engines, check the airline’s own site so see if you can get it for the same price minus the booking fee. The important subset of this are airlines who do not play nice and do not offer their fares up to aggregators (ex: Southwest). You have to check their sites individually.
In my experience there is no ONE website that you can use to get the lowest airfare every single time. It fluctuates quite a bit because there a LOT of variables involved. Don’t ask me why - it’s just how it is.
My recommendation to get lowest airfare:
Start with Farechase, Sidestep, Kayak, Farecast.
Search Southwest and Jet Blue.
Check the old-schoolers: Orbitz, Travelocity, Expedia.
For good measure (and to be sure) check Cheaptickets, Hotwire, Priceline, Mobissimo, and Trabber.
You can also dig deeper using the quick list on the right. Try different days if you can (one day before/after), nearby airports (usually there’s a checkbox for that), and also check out building the flight with one-ways instead of round trip. This works especially if you have a 3-way flight or find that Southwest has a great 1-way price, but not roundtrip - then you can just use the other engines to get a cheap 1-way flight back.
If you feel really ambitious, check the airline’s own websites - list on the right (sometimes they’ll have unpublished deals).
When you find the cheapest flight that suits your needs, go ahead and book it. One of the things you’ll eventually run into is “oops, that $280 flight is now $320″ messages. It will annoy the hell out of you. But that’s just how it is. You might want to check the other aggregators - sometimes you can catch what you just missed on and one and find it on the other.
Since travel is a big industry, there are a lot of shady websites/clubs/etc. that try to get your email address or try to get you subscribed to some service. I’ve never found those very useful. The only exception is TravelZoo. I’ve signed up for their weekly Top 20 Travel deals email and I can say I’ve seen some impressive deals there.
Note: The above is mostly for US flights. If you’re looking for International, check out skyscanner.net, momondo.com, and trabber.com (non US). I haven’t tried them myself but I hear they’re good.
Feel free to share your flight booking strategies in the comments or give some travel tips of your own.


From: http://blog.auinteractive.com/how-to-get-the-cheapest-flight-every-single-time

Top Ten methods to access banned websites

Top Ten methods to access banned websites
1. Use IP address - This is the simplest way to bypass domain name based access restrictions. Instead of the domain name such as www.webstuffscan.com use the direct IP address. To find the IP address use one of the free host to IP online conversion tools such as this.
2. Use Google cache - If you are not bothered whether the content is latest on a site, Google cache is best. Do a Google search for the site and then click on the cached link below the search results.
3. Use an Anonymizer - In this method you access a third party site which in turn routes your request to the required server. Some services provide URL encryption also. The problem is that most of these servers are no longer free. Do a google search for the latest list as this is a very dynamic area Following are some services which still works(free!),
Proxify - Hides original URL and provides an array of access of options. The is one of the best free servers.Block Stop - New guy in the town!Anonymouse - This works, but URL is visible and hence may be blocked by the filtering software.
4. Use Online Translation Tools - In this method, we can use the translation service as a web proxy. Following are the best links I know of. Again Google is your best friend for more resources.
Altavista Babel fish - In the above replace www.webstuffscan.com with the site you want. You can also visit Babel fish site.Google Translate - Similar to Babel fish.
5. Use Google Mobile search - Google mobile search works, but output may not be optimal. This is very similar to using a Web proxy.
6. Use a public Proxy server - There are many free proxy servers out in the Web. Note that in order to use these you have to change internet connection settings in Internet Explorer or whatever browser you use. This is one such list.
7. Get web pages via email - This is useful if you need a single Web page. Obviously accessing large files is not possible. Given below are some examples.
You can use SEND http://www.yahoo.com/ in the body of the message and send it to agora@dna.affrc.go.jp to retrieve yahoo.com home page.You can also check out services at web2mail which includes web page subscriptions.G.E Boyd has an extensive list of servers. Note that many in the list are no longer working.
9. Use Tor Distributed Proxy - Tor is an advanced proxy server using multiple anonymous servers for a single Web request. This requires an application to be downloaded and installed.
8. Your own proxy server - This is an advanced technique and is probably the best. This requires your own proxy server hosted either at your home or at a hosting service provider. You can enable SSL encryption and prevent any snooping on the content as well. Also put some access control, otherwise someone can find the service and misuse it (Trust me, there are many who are looking for such an opportunity!).
Use Apache Web server as proxy server - A bit complex setup.Use Privoxy - - This is the recommended approach. Please see this page for more details.Use PHPProxy as a Web Proxy - You can use PHPProxy to setup a Web proxy.
10. Use alternate content providers - When everything fails, you can use alternate service providers. For example if Gmail is blocked at your place, you can take another obscure mail address and enable email forward at Gmail.
Important!Be careful when you are using public proxy servers. It is possible for the guy who is hosting the service to snoop on the data that is passing through. So I wouldn’t recommend putting any important information such credit card details when you are using public proxy server method.
update 1 (Nov 26) - Sharjeel has got an impressive list of 300+ web proxies.
update 2 (Dec 22) - Check out my latest how to on running your own windows Http proxy server.