By Nathan Diller
If you've struggled to get a fare that low, you're not alone. While advertised airfare sales sound enticing, it can feel impossible to take advantage of them.
"I would say there's generally a lot of smoke, not a lot of fire when it comes to advertised airline sales," said Scott Keyes, the founder of Scott's Cheap Flights.
With a slew of terms and conditions, the deals tend to be restrictive and can be less advantageous for travellers than they appear. But they can influence other fares, and occasionally you might even find that golden plane ticket.
We spoke to travel experts about how to navigate airline sales and promotions, and how to increase your chances of finding a deal no matter what.
Read the fine print
Zach Griff, a senior reporter at the Points Guy, said splashy sales with language like "fares as low as X dollars," primarily served to draw travellers to an airline's website.
"That is really there largely to generate marketing buzz, buzz among the press," he said.
When customers visited the sites, Griff said, the deals were only as good as the asterisk denoting their terms and conditions.
"You'll see that there are lots of exclusions, dates of travel, book-by dates and travel-by dates," he said.
Advertised sales also tended to feature certain types of routes.
"The cheapest fares that are available typically in an advertised sale tend to almost always be short-haul flights that are not terribly expensive to begin with," Keyes said.
"They can very cleverly lump in a cheap fare on those routes with more expensive fares on other routes and they can say, you know, 'It starts at $49.'"
Keyes said airlines often had only a select number of seats available at the price used in an advertisement.
With so many limitations, he said, only a small percentage of people looking at flights during a given promotion were able to get the lowest fare advertised.
"It's got to be very low, single digits," he said.
Compare and contrast
Even if you aren't able to get the fare in big, bold letters on the ad, it's worth looking at flights while a promotion is going on.
Griff said that while your trip might not fit the parameters laid out in the fine print, airlines would often discount other fares at the same time – just not by as much.
Competitors may have lower fares during sales, too.
"Airlines are notorious for matching one another's fares," Keyes said.
He noted, however, the practice was less common during advertised sales than other times that airlines slashed prices.
To get a comprehensive view of the options, Griff recommends looking at Google Flights. Based on stored flight data, the service can tell travellers whether a fare is higher or lower than average, and how it has changed over time.
"Those are really actionable insights that I always recommend people act off," he said.
Look beyond advertised deals
Keyes said the best deals for travellers weren't the ones airlines were putting marketing muscle behind.
"It's the unadvertised sales that are the real gold mines," he said.
Without the cost of an ad campaign and the risk of disappointing customers who don't get the fare publicised, slashing prices quietly gave the airlines more flexibility.
To keep tabs on the market, Keyes's Scott's Cheap Flights, Google Flights, travel app Hopper, Skyscanner and other services allow travellers to set up price alerts so they'll know when there's a great deal.
"The best way to take advantage of those deals is to be using a tool that's monitoring for them so that you know when they're available on the routes you're actually interested in," said Hayley Berg, Hopper's head of price intelligence.
Griff suggested that travellers book a desirable fare when they saw it, as fares on all flights to, from and within the US could be cancelled within 24 hours for a full refund – with some exceptions.
Customers could also use products like Hopper's "Price Freeze" tool, Berg said, which temporarily locked in a price for a small deposit.
Be flexible
That doesn't necessarily mean you can't take advantage of a much-hyped airline promotion. Keyes said that at least every other week, one of the major airlines had an advertised sale.
Berg said passengers might find the low price they were looking for on a route that got them close enough to their destination.
Advertised deals might also only apply to one-way flights, but to find a deal, customers could book their trip on more than one airline.
In general, when it comes to cheap-flight hunting, Keyes said, flexibility was key, with three main areas to think about: where you go, when you go there and when you book.
Keyes said travellers looking for affordable fares should book in the "Goldilocks windows," not too far in advance of travel and not too close to departure.
"That's when cheap flights are most likely to pop up," he said.
For domestic travel, the period was about one to three months before a trip, while it widened to between two and eight months for international travel.
Consider the big picture
Deals aren't limited to an airline's fare.
Crossey also noted that sales on flights "don't always mean the lowest prices." While one carrier has a sale, a budget airline might have an even cheaper fare, just as full-service airlines might run a sale offering better prices than a low-cost carrier.
"When it comes to airline prices, context is everything," he said.
As for those buzzy advertised sales, Keyes cautioned travellers not to get their hopes up.
"It never hurts to poke around," he said.
"Maybe every once in a while you'll be able to strike gold, but nine times out of 10 it's not going to end up resulting in a cheap flight that you would want."