Here’s the thing, airline ticket prices are so dynamic that they can go up or down anytime. You do not have to be a frequent flyer to know that. And for most people, they will only be paying for economy seats not first class nor business class. When planning for a trip, a person can spend several hours just looking for the cheapest possible flights and not complain about it as long as he got what he was looking for but there is a better way than waste several hours of what could have been a more productive day: e-track your fare. What does e-tracking your fair mean? Simple. It just means that you sign up for your preferred airline’s alert systems for airfares. Instead of manually tracking fares one by one, these tools will do it for you. There are several very promising airline and travel sites which offer these alert systems and I would like to share them with you. What these babies do is monitor the trips that you have planned to go to and then when the flights or routes you chose decreased their airfare, they will let you know immediately.
In my opinion, Airfarewatchdog (airfarewatchdog.com) is probably the best among these alert systems. It is certainly comprehensive as they will send you alerts via email if their system spots low fare deals from airport to airport. What makes this site stand out from the rest? It’s because of the following reasons: some of their alerts are based on promo codes which other alert systems tend to miss, their alert systems & airfare search process employ both people and computers and they also include fares from Southwest Airlines, one that is missed by almost all alert systems. One teeny tiny setback though is it becomes a little annoying if you are travelling on a multi- airport area in the metro because the thing is, you have to input all airport to airport links individually.
Another good site is SmarterTravel, a sister site of Airfarewatchdog. They give you daily or email bulletins via email and it is not only limited to airline ticket prices. They cover car rentals, hotel booking and even vacation packages too. They have fare alerts based on departure cities and periodic cities.
Aside from travel websites, you can now also count on the different social media networks to alert you of promo airfares. What you can do is just like of follow the airline or travel agency’s social media page like Facebook, Instagram or Twitter. If you are a fan of Southwest Airlines, you can install their “Ding” feature on your iPhone and you will be alerted on any fare changes automatically. Yapat.com as well as Hardwire.com are other useful websites.
The thing is, it might take a little bit of time and effort for you to have a system on how you will be alerted or how you even go about booking cheap airline tickets. Just make sure that once you do have a system to share this to your fellow air travelers.