TOOLS : GETTING THERE : PLANES : FIND THE CHEAPEST AIRFARE :

STEP 9: Bidding Sites & Opaque Airfares

I've got an airfare to Europe here...going once...going twice...SOLD to the fella in Philly with the Mac who already gave us his credit card number and can't back out now!

"SUPPLY AND DEMAND" is a two-way street, and the Internet is the traffic cop who pointed that out to us. Auction sites have truly come into their own—witness the stupefying success, and sweeping cultural effect, of eBay.

Bidding for travel is no exception—indeed, back in the old days (1998), its champion in shining armor, Priceline.com, was once of the true darlings of the Internet. Even Captain Kirk loved it! Well, Priceline is still around, and it has a bit of competition, plus there's that variant on bidding sites called opaque fares, but we'll get to that in a minute.

The Auctions
First: online travel auctions. Simple. You give them your home airport, your destination, and your travel dates, they provide you with a deal up to 50% lower than official fares. The catch? You gotta be flexible on departure time and you don't get to pick your airline. Also, you have to brush up on the going rates before you get started.

The idea is you put in your itinerary and a price you're willing to pay, it lets the airlines (all the biggies are members of Priceline) decide whether to accept your bid and sell you a seat. Once you enter a bid, you are obligated to pay if an airline accepts the bid, so you have to be sure of this going into it. After all, they have your credit card number.

You also have to do your homework and find out the absolute minimum you could get a ticket for through regular methods. That means going through the whole rigamarole described on the "Getting the Cheapest Airfare" page.

Bidding Strategies
Then, armed with that fare, hack maybe 35% off it and plug that amount into Priceline. No, that 35% isn't scientific; I just made it up. It's a fairly reasonable rate—and yes, it's pointless to try and get a transatlantic ticket for $10—and it means you may get a bite.

Seriously: find out the going rate first. Whenever I go to these sites, I wince to see folks bidding ludicrous sums for trips that would cost them less if they just rang up the airline and asked for a ticket straight out—like bidding $250 for a round-trip ticket from NYC to London when the going rate at the time, on the very same airline, was $170. (continued...)