If you ever have to travel last minute, try the one of the following methods to cut costs:
- The Priceline Hack. Everyone knows Priceline can help you get lower fares than what you can typically find on the common aggregator sites like Kayak, Expedia, etc. However, most people don’t know that as the departure date approaches, airlines will do ANYTHING to fill empty seats. (However, they won’t ever do it by discounting prices at the counter.) The way around that is to do your research online.
- 1 to 3 days before your trip, find the best price possible (and make sure you’re OK with the flight times of those best prices because odds are – you’ll end up on those flights.)
- Once you’ve found the best price – make note of the dates, drop that price by about 60%, and try bidding for those dates on priceline.
- If that doesn’t work, try again, but only drop the price by 50%.
- Wash, rinse & repeat until you’ve reached the most you want to pay. Unless the planes you’re trying to get on are 99% booked, you’ll save at least 30% off of the lowest published fare you could otherwise find.
- The Spirit Airlines hack. If you don’t have any luck with the Priceline Method, here is a backup plan. Not many people know this, but Spirit has way lower fares at the desk than if your book online (even if through their website.) If you just want to get out of town last minute, and are flexible on where you want to go, drop by the Spirit airlines desk and see what fares they have. (Pack light. Spirit charges an arm and a leg to check a bag (and they charge even more for carry ons that don’t fit under your seat.))
Happy travels!
If you’ve got any tips of your own that you’d like to share, feel free to let us know. If we publish your tip to the site, we’ll do a free custom trip search for you (valued at $39).