Biggest Misconceptions about Finding the Lowest Airfares.
As a starting point here is a great summary article:
When is the Best Time to Buy Airline Tickets?
A list my cheap flights flown along with the places I've been are listed here:
This is a great site for searching for flights (similar to kayak/orbitz/priceline which you probably have heard of). Allows you a lot of fancy options. It includes most airlines but not Southwest/Allegiant. Can be slow.
https://www.google.com/flights/
This is my favorite site for searching for fares because it is very fast and pretty accurate. You do not get as much versatility as ITA though. Some features I like: calendar view, saved flights, suggested "best" flights based on time and duration, suggestions for other dates.
Site which finds hidden city fares. Say I want to fly from A to B. It may be cheaper to buy a ticket from A to C with a stop in B. I would then get off the plane and not fly the B to C leg. I have used this strategy many times (8+) with great success. You run the small risk of being rebooked to C so use this with caution. Additionally you will not get miles for the last leg of your flight and run the risk of losing miles for the entire trip.
Great site for searching for ticket prices outside the US. Google flights and ITA are good, but can sometimes find cheaper prices here. US-based carriers can charge significantly more than their counterparts in other countries because they are catering to a completely different clientele. When buying tickets with not legs in the US I always check in with skyscanner.
Another aggregator website like skyscanner. Very popular among many of cheap flight bloggers. Included here because it has some sites that skyscanner misses. Great for searching for tickets outside the US.
This is not a website but an app. If you have set dates and a set destination in mind but don't know when to buy, then this app is for you. They project when prices will drop and send you notifications when to purchase tickets. The app is very user-friendly and their algorithms seem to do a pretty good job.
Included here because you cannot see Southwest fares anywhere but Southwest.com.
I get alerts for Seattle ---> Minneapolis, NYC, Tel Aviv. I flew Seattle to Minneapolis for $199 roundtrip from this site. I like this site because whenever the price changes you will get notified. This means that I have a general idea of the trends in prices from Seattle and I can gauge what is or is not a good deal.
I am not a huge fan of this one but people like it. They have a world map the prices for anywhere in the world (google flights now has this). You can also set up alerts to your email when the prices to a certain region (or specific destination) drop below a certain price.
This is the "it" site for deals. I have flown:
They cater to New York, Boston, Philadelphia, D.C, Miami, Dallas, Phoenix, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, and Chicago.
This is a sister site for theflightdeal. My parents flew Minneapolis to Honolulu for $355 roundtrip from this site. It caters to smaller US cities (Atlanta, Charlotte, Denver, Detroit, Houston, Kansas City, Las Vegas, Minneapolis, Orlando, and San Diego).
You can set up alerts on your phone and if you see a fare you need to be ready to jump on it. I flew New York to Milan for $240 roundtrip and Seattle to New York for $56 roundtrip. Dansdeals is not only focused on cheap flights they have a bunch of other deals.
https://scottscheapflights.com/
Site with many deals and error fares. Focuses on international travel. Highly recommend signing up for the email list. Allows you to select your interest regions (I do USA/Europe). Also presents deals in a great format with deal price vs "normal price" and also gives an estimated expiration for the deal.
http://dealswelike.boardingarea.com/
Similar site to dansdeals. But instead of alerts of all deals you can get just cheap flight alerts.
Posts a slew of daily deals (travel related, not just flights) every weekday, and does a great job of posting the flight error fares when they come up.
Some great deals here. Lots of Europe focus but have US deals. I flew San Francisco to Auckland for $212 roundtrip from this.
One of my favorite sites right now. I flew Rome -> Singapore -> Seattle for $490 oneway from this. Also Seattle -> Bangkok, Manila -> Vancouver for $399. This is an example of an open-jaw flight. They also are focused on Europe but have US deals.
Europe based with great deals.
If I had one place to recommend to find cheap fares but not to any specific destinations it would be this twitter list I made which has most of the sites above.
https://twitter.com/flightdealsguy/lists/flightdealsguy
You do not need a twitter account to view this page. I use this to send alerts to my phone whenever there are deals to/from Seattle. The really good deals do not last long. If I did not have mobile alerts set-up I would have missed out on most of my trips.
In a similar vein, if you prefer getting updates via email I would recommend:
The watchdog feature of this website will send you alerts when flights fit your designated criterion. I get alerts for flights to/from Seattle.
This is the be all and end all of flying forums. There is a steep learning curve but if you are committed many of the deals from the other sites I mentioned appear here. I flew to Stockholm from Oakland for $152 one-way from this.
This is the holy grail for error fares. But people are very secretive and will communicate in code. If you really want to go down the rabbit hole this is the place. Contact me directly for more information. I flew to Shanghai from Seattle for $225 roundtrip from this.
This is a subscription site with many features. Most useful for me is the ability to see the fare information for flights between city pairs. Which vastly simplifies the process of searching for possible fuel dumps. Contact me directly for more information.