I’M NEW TO THE SITE AND:

Q: I see a fare that I like and I'm soooo excited. What do I do?

A: The first thing you do is take your index finger and click. Directly on the price or the words "see all details" in the list of fares... that's it. (From our city-to-city alerts, click on our "See Fare Details" link.)  Do that? Good! You are now well on your way to finding a really good deal. Each of our fares is hyper-linked to an "Airfare details" page. On it will be info that will help you book the fare, including the fare period, days of the week you can travel, and whether seats are plentiful, spotty or scarce. Best of all there will be a links to check availability & dates and to book your tickets.  Our Flexible Dates links usually go right to a results page on a booking site like Travelocity or Orbitz (which will save you time) or to the airline's website (we wish we could take you to a results page for those as well, but they don't allow us to, so you'll have to hunt and peck a bit.) From there, all you'll have to do is find an available date, which is sometimes easy and sometimes not so easy.  We also have a step-by-step tutorial on how to book fares from our newsletters and email alerts for you Airfarewatchdog "newbies."  Check it out!

Hint:  If you're using our calendars to check specific dates make sure your web browser's view settings are neither zoomed out or zoomed in, but at the normal/default setting.  Otherwise, the calendar could misalign.

Q: I want to get information about the amazing sale fares that you list, but there are so many choices of newsletter fare alert emails. Which one should I choose and how do I sign up?

A: To sign up just click on the "Fare Alerts" link from our homepage. It's in the menu on the left under the heading "Airfare Deals." Once you're there you can choose one or all three of the following options:

Fare Alerts from Departure Cities (from US & Canada only) - This is our general, all-purpose informative newsletter. You will be able to choose the frequency of delivery (Daily, Frequently or Weekly) for this email newsletter, which will contain a listing of all current sale fares that we have found for travel originating from this city. This will include fares for travel to both domestic and international destinations, as well as last-minute weekend fares put on sale by airlines trying to decrease unsold inventory. We have listed alternate airports in this newsletter for your convenience as well. We include short snippets of current air-travel related news and helpful hints from our resident experts.
 

Fare Alerts to Cities - This is for those of you who want to see the list of cities in the US and Canada for which we have found low sale fares for travel to your chosen  destination.  (It could be most helpful to those of you who are planning a wedding, meeting, reunion or convention -- when you're interested in seeing fares from multiple cities all to one location.)   We'll send you an email whenever we find new deals to a city like London, New York,  Paris, Tokyo, San Francisco, Atlanta or Buenos Aires from all over the US and Canada. Even if your home airport isn't listed, you can use the information to construct your own itinerary from an airport that's farther away, but has a great deal to your chosen destination. You can also use this information to track prices from other cities for comparison purposes. Another plus, you'll be able to choose frequency of delivery, just like with our Departure City alerts.

City-to-City Fare Alerts - This nifty little service is for those of you with narrower, more specific interests. Enter two airports and we send you an email only when we find a sale fare for that particular route. No more, no less. Delivery only happens if we have news for you, so there's no need to choose a frequency setting.   If we find fares for your route a lot, you'll be hearing from us quite often. If it's a route that doesn't get discounted regularly, it could be weeks between emails.

 Tips For Managing Your Account Settings:

For those of you who want to change or add to your account settings, click on "My Fare Alerts" located in the upper right-hand corner of our web pages.  From any of our email alerts, you can click on the "Update Your Subscriptions" link at the bottom of the email. and after you've entered or deleted information make sure you click on the "update" button near the bottom of the page and get a confirmation message to make sure that your new preferences were saved.      

CAN’T FIND THE LISTED FARES:

Q: There's a fare from yesterday's newsletter that I want, and when I clicked on it, I got a "this deal is over" message or the price had changed.  No fare, no fair!

A: First of all, take a deep cleansing breath and let it out... now, don't you feel better?  Yes, these fares can be really time-sensitive. Why?  Well, many of the fares we find and list are part of the unadvertised price wars between the airlines.  They update, change, and delete these fares up to three times a day (not to mention sell-out of them, because the airlines set aside limited numbers of seats for sale fares.)  In many ways it's like the stock market and if you see a price that you like, you should act fast or it may be too late. If you happen to see a fare that you like from an old email that was sent to you on another day, check your airport's fare page on our website first to see if it's still current (keeping in mind that it's been selling steadily the entire time!)  Our newsletters tend to have a short "shelf life."  If you get a "deal over" message, check back with the website later.  We're in the process of finding out if it's still available or looking for another good sale.  Of course, if you don't feel like waiting for us (especially for you 4am in the morning web-surfing-night-owl types), you can always check for yourself by doing a flexible dates search.  Not sure how?  Check out our User Guide For A Flexible Dates Search on CheapAir.com or our User Guide For A Flexible Dates Search on Travelocity or our User Guide For A Flexible Dates Search on Orbitz.com.

Q: I saw a fare for "XYZ Airlines" listed on your site for $23 RT and I didn't click on the convenient hyperlinks you provided, instead I called "XYZ Airlines" to make a reservation and the phone rep said there was no such fare, and they had never heard of you.  I had to pay $2000.00 more and take out a second mortgage.  Why, oh why, do you hate me so?!

A: Okay, that's a bit of an exaggeration, but this kind of thing does happen way too often and we don't like it.  First of all, never, never, ever leave the computer to find these web-based fares.  Many of them are only available online.  Secondly, we don't want to sound paranoid, but really, what motivation do the airlines have to lead you by the hand to the cheapest fare?  If you were in a management position for a financially strapped industry, wouldn't you encourage the wage slaves in the call centers to say, they'd never heard of the cheap sale fare, hmmm? Please, stay off the phone!!  Email us if you have a problem.  We're here to help.

FARE AVAILABILITY:

Q: Hey! One of your fare listings says "travel through (fill in date here)" and I tried to book a fare leaving Friday night after work of the (fill in major holiday here) weekend and coming back Sunday night, when everybody else wants to fly, in time to be well-rested for work on Monday . My itinerary falls within the dates covered in your listing, so why didn't I get that fare?! It must be a "bait and switch" on your part!!

A: We'd like to take this opportunity to address the difference between the fare period and date availability. Not all dates are going to be available within a fare period, especially around the holidays and peak travel days such as weekends (not to mention any blackout dates that the airline institutes.) Flexible travel dates will increase your chances of booking a sale fare, as will traveling mid-week as opposed to weekends (although people do book weekend sale fares all the time.)

Q: Speaking of dates, why do those calendars on the booking sites (that shall remain nameless) show all those dates, which then disappear when you click on them? It's so annoying!

A: We couldn't agree more. We find those calendars frustrating to use too. Apparently they like to tease us with what was available before they actually show us what is available. Right now, however, they're the only game in town for flexible date searches and really, having flexible travel dates is the easiest, most effective way to find the sale fares that we list.

Check out our User Guide for a  Flexible Dates Search on Travelocity, or our User Guide for a Flexible Dates Search on CheapAir.com, or our User Guide for a Flexible Dates Search on Orbitz.com.

SPECIAL FARE PROGRAMS:

Q: There's a great sale fare listed for members of Virgin America's eleVAte program or Southwest's DING! Fare specials, or American's DealFinder users, etc.... how do I get those fares?  Can't I just go to the website or call them and get those deals?

A: First of all, no calling!  What did we say about staying off the phone?  These fares are for participants in these programs, so we encourage you to join.  You can really get some great deals this way and we list these fares for the many of you who are already members and for the rest of you, who haven't joined yet , we want to let you know what amazing fares could be available to you.  So join already!  And remember, sometimes you can't get access to the sale fares that were announced before you joined, but you'll be eligible for any deal after that.  Now that 's a good thing!

BOOKING MULTIPLE TRAVELERS OR ONE-WAY TICKETS:

Q: Whenever I click on one of your fares and find what I want, it won't let me buy more than one ticket.  Are these fares only good for people traveling alone?

A: Our links are pre-set for one traveler for a round-trip ticket, but it's a simple process to book other travel plans. To book one-way ("OW") tickets and/or multiple travelers you can apply the same process:  Find an itinerary and available dates that suit you.  Write down or remember the aforesaid itinerary and dates.  Go back to the home page of the booking site and reset your search parameters for a one-way ticket or for more than one traveler.  Enter the available dates and desired itinerary and voila!  If the fare is available for more than one traveler, the results should come right back up for you at the same price per ticket.  Ditto for one-way travel.  See, that was simple, wasn't it?!

Note:  We have read in a number of articles that sometimes to get sale fares, you must buy your multiple tickets "one at a time," because the sale fares are pre-set on the booking site to show up as only available for single ticket purchases.  If you do this, it's possible that your single tickets may each be priced differently, or worse yet, the flight is sold-out before you can buy all the tickets that you need.  Just something to keep in mind.

OPEN JAW & MULTI-CITY TRIPS:

Q.  I'm planning a multi-city trip.  How do I sign up for a fare alert for my trip?

A.  When the airlines announce fare sales, they apply to round-trip routes.  So finding a listed sale fare specifically for your multi-city route really isn't going to happen.  That's why we don't have a place on our Newsletter page to sign up for alerts for multi-city itineraries.

Domestic Multi-City Trips
In order for you to find sale fares for your trip, the stars are really going to have to align for you.  Three things will have to happen.  First, each leg of your trip has to be discounted as a roundtrip fare.  Next, each of those discounted fares will also have to be available as  a one-way trip for half the roundtrip price.  And finally, the fare periods for all the routes have to coincide with your travel dates!  In other words, a "perfect storm" of sale fares has to occur.  Not impossible, but it could be tough.

International Multi-City Trips
Believe it or not you might have a better chance to travel on the cheap with an international itinerary to multiple cities than a domestic one.  The strategy is to get a great sale fare for a round-trip ticket to a city that has good sales often, such as London, Dublin, Paris and the like.  Once you're there, use the cheaper local carriers for your trips around that part of the world.  Return to the orlginal arrival city and use the return portion of the roundtrip ticket to get home to the US.  You could really save a bundle this way.   Leave plenty of time for your connections, because whenever you book travel as separately transacted itineraries in this manner, the airlines are not responsible to rebook or accommodate you in any way when you miss a flight because of another airline's lateness.  It could a very expensive missed flight if it happens, wiping out all your previous savings and then some! 

CAN'T FIND THE ROUTE OR CITY YOU'RE LOOKING FOR:

Q. Why don't you have the route that I'm looking for on your site?  I've seen it there before and now that I need it, it's not there.  

A: If you're not seeing your desired route or if your city-to-city alert hasn't been coming as often as you'd like, it's because the price for that route is currently pretty high and we haven't found any fares that are anything out of the ordinary.  Since we're a low sale fare listing site, our lists never remain the same, but change constantly, depending on what fares we feel are a good deal and value for our users.  Hold on, the next sale could be just around the corner!

THE BEST TIME TO BUY:

Q. When is the best time to purchase the fare for my route?  You have a pretty decent fare listed right now that fits in with my plans, but I want to get the best price.  Should I wait for something even lower to come along?

A: We're not psychic and we would never venture to predict when a fare is absolutely going to hit rock bottom.  But we firmly believe that a good fare in the hand is worth way more than the possible-maybe-iffy-bargain-basement/fire-sale fare in the future that most likely will not appear.  Generally, we find that once a route has been discounted and has sold-out at that price, the airlines don't usually need to or want to put it on sale again, and then if they do, only at the very, very last minute.  That's way too much stress for most of us here, because if that fare doesn't go on sale and you have to be somewhere, you'll be stuck paying the same high price as the last-minute business traveler, who's traveling on his company's dime.  We don't think we need to remind you whose dime you'll be traveling on!


Q. Okay, but what if I don't see my route listed as a sale fare right now?  Then when is the best time to purchase my tickets?

A:  Keep track of the fare periods for sale fares to your destination.  Not just from your home airport, but other cities as well.  When the dates that you are going to travel start appearing in sale fare listings, that's when you know that the time for any discount that may be coming is upon you.  Our Arrival City alerts can help you do this, as well as our City to City alerts.  


Q. But last year, when I was tracking this fare they had a fabulous last-minute sale, so I should wait for that this year, right?

A:  Uh, no.  Any sale fare is the result of a reaction to current market conditions such as the price of jet fuel, the willingness of the travel consumer to spend, the popularity of a given destination at the time, how many seats have been sold for a particular route, the overall economic health of an airline and the economy in general.  The decision to put any fare on sale at a discount is made according to these and other factors at the present time.  That's why it is very difficult sometimes for us to guess when or how a sale is going to occur.

And for the very last word on fare prognostication:  Here's George!

NON-DELIVERY OF NEWSLETTERS, MANAGING ACCOUNT SETTINGS & MORE:

Q: I signed up for a newsletter and I've been waiting and waiting and waiting for it to show up...

A:
    1. Make sure that farealert@airfarewatchdog.com is in your known senders/allowed contacts list or address book.  Otherwise, you may not receive our newsletter due to SPAM controls built into many email systems.  Look in your SPAM folder to see if we're in it.
    2. Remember that only the Fare Alerts from Departure Cities and the domestic travel Fare Alerts to Cities are delivered regularly.  International Fare Alerts to Cities and the City-to-City Alerts are only sent out if we have a sale fare to report to you.
    3.  For our users who have signed up for fare information about some of the smaller airports that we cover, if there is not a lot going on, we sometimes opt not to send out these newsletters just for the sake of sending.  If regular delivery is important to you, sign up for a larger airport that you use occasionally and you'll get all the news that's fit to print.


Q: My newsletter used to come all the time and suddenly it stopped, what should I do?

A: 

1.     Double-check your newsletter account settings, just in case.
2.     Find out if your internet service provider has updated or changed its SPAM control system.
3.     See 1., 2. & 3. from the previous question.
4.     Contact your internet service provider to see if they have a notion as to why we can't get past whatever blocks they're putting up.
5.     Email us; however, if we do confirm that the newsletters have been sent out for your airport, we rarely can fix the problem from our end. All we can do is send and it's up to your internet service provider to make sure that the mail that you want is delivered to you and ends up in your mailbox, not trapped in their SPAM filters or bounced away into the ether of the internet.
6. When all else fails, try signing up with another email address with a different domain name.  99.9% of the time, this will fix the issue.    
7. See below regarding "banned" email addresses.                                                                                                                              

Q:  I'm getting a "banned" message when I enter my email address.  What happened and what should I do?

A: At some point in the past you must have accidentally designated an email from us (or our parent company) as SPAM.  Our system automatically makes sure that email cannot be sent to folks who don't want it.  All you have to do to start getting emails from us again is to contact us and ask that your email address be unbanned.  (And please, go easy on the "this is SPAM" button in the future!)

Q: How do I change my account settings or unsubscribe?

A: First of all, it always helps to have your pop-up blockers disabled, because you may have to enter your email address in a pop-up field to get to your account settings.  Secondly, anytime you make changes to your settings, hit the "Update" button to save those changes.

From one of our newsletters or alerts, it's really simple.  At the bottom of the page there are two links, "Unsubscribe" and "Update Your Subscriptions."  Click on either one and voila! 

From the website, just click on "My Fare Alerts" in the upper right hand corner of any of our webpages.  On the next page, there will be an "Already Subscribed?" link to click on.  Enter your email address and you'll be able to manage your account settings or unsubscribe.  (Hint: The unsubscribe link is in the lower right hand corner of the account settings page.)

Q: I'm trying to sign up for more newsletter alerts or change my account settings and I'm having trouble getting the boxes to let me type my cities in.  Help!

A: All of the city/airport boxes on our site have an auto-fill function.  Type slowly and let the prompt menu appear, then click on the airport that you want in the menu to finish filling in the box.  Remember to click the "update" button whenever you've added new information.  (Slower connection speeds require more patience from you, when it comes to the auto-fill function.)

UNADVERTISED SALE FARES:

Q: Why would unadvertised sale fares disappear?  Can't you guys make them stick around?

A: Fares that are unadvertised (but that we have found anyway) are part of the daily fare wars between the folks at the airlines.  It's kind of like a poker game where they continuously try to undercut each other in price whenever it's time to update fares.  This can happen up to three times a day, and that's why a great price can appear and disappear suddenly.

TAXES & FEES:

Q.  Would it be possible to mention/list the actual fees, taxes, etc that will be added on to a so-called low fare? They often amount to many times the stated ticket price, especially for international travel!

AND THE MOST FREQUENT "Q" OF THE FAQ'S:

Q.  "What gives?"

A.  This little phrase is such a favorite and yet, it puzzles us.  We see it over and over again.  It's usually added to a query, well after the question has been asked or long after the facts of the inquiry have been quite clearly laid out.  And really, what does it actually mean?  We've decided to answer this question literally.  "What gives?"  Well actually, a whole lot of things, but in answering your question we'd like to focus on the many wonderful organizations that make this a better world to live in.  For example, The American Cancer Society, UNICEF, The American Red Cross, the ASPCA, The Girl Scouts of America, the World Wildlife Fund... well, you get the idea.  There are so many great organizations that give and give and give.  We'd like to encourage you to do the same.   So the next time you feel inclined to ask, "What gives?"  Why don't you just answer, "I do!"  And make a generous contribution to the charity of your choice.