Wanderlust World Wanderlust World I am often asked how I find such incredible deals on flights. For example, I recently flew to Italy for less than $300 round trip and from Atlanta to Salt Lake City for $100 round trip. I found both of these deals, and many more, through the Best Fare Tracker in my Yahoo account. I have my desired destinations listed in their Best Fare Tracker module on my personalized My Yahoo page. When I log in, it automatically shows the fares to me without me having to do individualized searches. The Best Fare Tracker utilizes all the major flight-search engines, as well as flight information directly from the airlines, when finding fares. The tracking module is always on and updating for the cities you have selected, which is what makes this such a convenient and easy travel tool. It only take a few minutes to to set up and, best of all, it's free!
If you don't already have one, sign-up for a free Yahoo account. You do this by going to the Yahoo home page (see Resources below) and clicking on the Free Mail sign-up link on the top right side of the home page, or the My Yahoo link on the top left side. You will need to provide some basic information, most importantly, what your zip code is. This will allow you to customize your page to best suit your needs.
After you have created a free My Yahoo page you can begin adding cities you wish to fly to into the Best Fare Tracker in the travel portion of your My Yahoo page. Yahoo will then begin showing you the current best fares to those cities whenever you are logged on to your account.
When you see a city with a fare you like click on it and enter the correct number of travelers. Then click on the "Check Availability" button. You will be taken to a list of airlines and their fares to that city, beginning with the cheapest fare at the top of the page.
In order to see the dates that a fare is available click on the "Select" button for each airline listed. The next page will be a calendar showing you when you can fly for that price. Click on the highlighted date you wish to depart. The next screen will show you if that date is still available or not and then ask you to pick your return date.
After you have clicked a return date a list of flight options will be on the next screen. First will be a list of departure options. After you have selected your departure option, you will see a list of return options. Pick the option that best suits the times you wish to travel and be sure to note if any option is showing connecting flights.
After you have completed the above steps you will be shown the final cost and given an option to purchase that ticket, as well as shown other options below that one. It is a good idea at this point to jot down all the flight information and contact the airline directly to see if you could book that flight directly through them for that price (they might be able to beat it), but if not be sure to enter any frequent flier account numbers you have in the appropriate fields when completing your purchase through Yahoo.