How to Find Family Airline Ticket Savings

Anyone can learn how to save money on airfare by reading the articles produced by the staff at FareCompare.com. Their web pages are detailed with easy to follow steps, and some have accompanying video reports. As the CEO, Rick Seaney, says on the company’s website, “I want to help travelers fly wherever they want, at the cheapest possible price.”

Finding the cheapest price for a family with kids poses additional difficulties.  CEO Rick recently posted an article that highlighted a unique airline ticket shopping method for multiple travelers.  Airline Tickets — Shop One Passenger First and Save on Trips for Two or More explains that there aren’t many seats at the lowest price-point on any given flight, and the online airline ticket search program may bump your entire family to the next level of price if your family has more people than the number of available cheapest seats. Rick outlines how to find the base ticket price first for one person, then determine if entering the number of seats you actually need bumps the price up, and what to do if it does. There is a way that you can still get the cheapest seat for one of your family members, even if the others are ticketed at the next tiered price level.

I appreciate Rick’s writing style because it doesn’t assume I have any base knowledge of what I’m trying to do! The FareCompare website how-two articles start at the beginning, explain industry practices in simple terms, and clearly show me how to find what I want. The articles are organized by the navigation bar at the top of the website, and the categories are: When-to-Fly, Where-to-Go, When-to-Buy, and How-to-Shop. The About link at the bottom of the page offers an FAQ link with brief answers.

FareCompare.com is an “independent airline ticket comparison shopping website”. I’ve signed up to receive email newsletters, which include current sales on airline tickets to many destinations, and links to the recent articles about saving money on flights. I’ve also signed up for FareCompare Alerts, which let me know via email when ticket prices have changed on my selected destinations, so that when I’m ready to buy, I’ll know what price to seek.

For example, I am dreaming of taking my family to Montreal. For my email Alerts, I plugged in my home airport, and the main airport in Montreal. Periodically, I receive notices telling me what the current lowest ticket price is, and whether it has gone up or down, and by how much. Clicking on the Find Flights link allows me to enter the month and length of stay for the trip I’m dreaming of, and results in a web page calendar with each day’s lowest fare. Clicking on my departure day, and then my return date, the website shows a page of flight results from multiple airlines and multiple travel search sites.

I’ve now added two other destinations I’m dreaming about visiting over the next two years: Chicago and Madrid. I can see the latest lowest prices for these places in the Manage Trips I’m Watching section.

I like being an educated consumer — thank you FareCompare!

Sandy Nielsen
Sleeps5.com

Note: We have not received compensation or free items from FareCompare, and we have not been contacted by, nor do we have any relationship with FareCompare at all. This is my unbiased description of my experience with the website.