Over the last year or two I’ve done my fair share of flying and have refined my methodology of making sure that I always get the cheapest airfare available. I wish I could tell you “use this one service,” but in reality it doesn’t work that way. Since there are so many variables at play, you have to run searches at a number of sites. So how do you get the best airfare?

There are basically three types of airfare websites: 1. Aggregators (ex: Kayak) that check airfares for many different airlines. They do not charge a fee but instead rely on affiliate hotel deals and on-site advertising like Adsense to make their money. These are historically the best bets. 2. Traditional booking engines (ex: Orbitz) that check multiple websites and take a small fee ~$6 in addition to the price of the flight. They process the sale on behalf of the airline and keep the fee. 3. Airline’s own websites (ex: JetBlue). If you find a flight on booking engines, check the airline’s own site so see if you can get it for the same price minus the booking fee. The important subset of this are airlines who do not play nice and do not offer their fares up to aggregators (ex: Southwest). You have to check their sites individually.

In my experience there is no ONE website that you can use to get the lowest airfare every single time. It fluctuates quite a bit because there a LOT of variables involved. Don’t ask me why – it’s just how it is.