With the air travel industry in turmoil and running scared from the global recession, the airlines have launched massive air fare sales across the board. Anyone that's been reading the travel blogs lately have certainly seen incredible offers.
It seems most of these are to and from North America and Europe, but also between London and Australia. Or between Europe and the Far East. When you start seeing $400 return flights between Chicago and London in June, you know times are pretty good for buying flight tickets.
I don't think there's any chance these deals are going to last. Airlines are cutting capacity to fill the planes, and these sale fares are mostly on highly competitive routes with plenty of business travelers. This means that once capacity has been adjusted, and the backlog of business travelers begins to buy tickets again, the sales will go away fast.
This means that if you see a great fare right now, jump on it. The deals aren't coming back.
Also, the airlines are rapidly adding even more a la carte pricing in their fares, with Virgin America being the most recent airline to add a fee for checking the first bag, charging a moderate $15 per bag. These fees certainly won't go away because the sales do, so air travel will become more expensive later on this year. Click over to this article for tips on scoring cheap flight tickets.
When I've been searching lately, the best fares have often turned up on Kayak.com, which searches 100+ sites for you, and they've stood up to running the same itinerary search on the airline's own site as well.
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