With so many airfare deal sites out there offering fare alerts and low fare deal specials, it may seem redundant that I have shifted my focus on Loyalty Traveler from hotel deals to airline deals. The reason I have been focusing so heavily on airline deals the past couple of months is there are so many more short-lived opportunities for low airfare and the scene changes almost daily.
I find the hunt for more airfares more interesting lately than repeating another version of Hyatt Hotel category changes that has been covered in ten other blogs on the same day. Hotel deals are much more difficult to assess since there are something like 40,000 hotels in major chains around the world and deals are so scattered. And hotel loyalty programs were hardly covered when I started Loyalty Traveler with that focus in 2008. That is no longer the case with every aspect of hotel loyalty programs dissected and packaged and latest industry news hand fed by public relations departments to bloggers (often with an embargo date enclosed, which is why the Hyatt category changes hit so many blogs all at once when we had these list of hotel category changes weeks ago.)
In the airline industry the key deals tend to be concentrated in a handful of airports each day. As a one person team, I can provide some unique insight into airfare trends, especially with regard to deals from the USA to international locations. There are all kinds of airfare deal sites out there, but most focus on quantity and not providing any insight to airfare trends.
USA Airfare Deals
Today is a different beast all together with American, United and many low cost carriers battling to put flyers into domestic seats on a variety of routes. I focused today on four USA airports with fare deals on American and United: Dallas DFW, New York LGA/Newark EWR, Philadelphia PHL and Washington BWI/DCA/IAD.
As I finished the last post on New York City and prepared my breakfast meal, Airfarewatchdog.com came to mind as the type of website that is really useful on a day like today when there are low fare deals from airports all around the USA. Honestly, I seldom look at airfarewatchdog, primarily because it is overwhelming with hundreds of routes covered from each major airport. Too much data is not necessarily a good thing when you find yourself searching for a needle in a haystack of fares. I often find good deals are hard to pick out in the mix. But when it comes to domestic USA routes, AFDW is one site I find quite useful.
For example, when I check AFWD for Dallas fares, their list shows 10 airports under $100 round trip. Then I can quickly locate these fares in Google Flights.
AFWD Fares From Dallas DFW
$94 New York La Guardia LGA United
AFDW Fares To Dallas DFW
5 of 10 low fares to Dallas DFW under $100 round trip are Frontier (Milwaukee $77, Denver $77, Cincinnati $87) and Spirit (Denver $70, New Orleans $80).
The fares that interest me are American and United. Primarily since I know I am likely to receive a complimentary upgrade on American. I have been upgraded to first class free on every domestic flight I have had as an AAdvantage Executive Platinum member.
- Las Vegas LAS – DFW $81 American
- Fort Lauderdale FLL – DFW $91 American
- Tampa TPA – DFW $98 United
- Boston BOS – DFW $98 United
- Minneapolis MSP – DFW $98 United
Of course these are mostly the same fares as from Dallas DFW. Fares to and from a place can be a useful tool when looking to book one-way fares in a multi-city routing from one city to another and not necessarily a simple round trip. Last week I showed how a flyer can route cheap one way flights around the USA and see three or four cities around the USA for less than the price of one cheap simple round trip from the USA to a city in Europe.
Loyalty Traveler – AA $432 LAX-ORD-BOS-DCA-MIA-DEN-LAX visit 5 USA cities for less than cheap ticket to Europe (June 29).
On a day like today with many routes around the USA on sale with American and United, AFWD is a useful tool for locating low fares and constructing a multi-city USA domestic trip with a combination of $40 to $70 one-way fares like I showed in the LAX to Chicago, Boston, Washington, Miami, Denver and back to LAX itinerary.
A quick check of California airports shows these low fare deals today are primarily concentrated in the eastern half of the USA.
No certainty as to how long these low domestic fares will last with American and United. Once the major fare sales of low cost carriers end, many of the major alliance airline low fares will disappear too.
Today is a good day to check out airfarewatchdog.com for deals.
I’d like to know your strategy for finding airfare deals. There are so many fare deal sites and I probably don’t know most of them. I seldom read daily emails and I have no fare alerts set up to any place at the moment. My problem now is trying to avoid buying some of the great airfare deals I have seen since this past month since my travel schedule is pretty much booked up for 2016 and I am not ready to lock myself into trips for 2017. Although, I do have about six weeks from Sep to early November I could schedule a quick trip if something really special comes around.
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