Travel Deal of the Day (Nov. 30, 2006)

The Deal:
Flying last-minute can be expensive. Without any advance purchase, a weekend trip can break the bank. But it does not have to be so expensive, especially with so many ways to save money on last minute tickets. Here are three ideas to save money when you need to travel last minute.

How:
1) Check last minute airfares offered by the airlines. Airlines usually offer last minute fare sales at the beginning of the week (usually Tuesday or Wednesday) for travel either the next weekend or the following weekend. A good website to check for last minute airfares is www.smartertravel.com - usually these last minute weekend fares require you to leave on Saturday and return the following Monday or Tuesday.

2) What if you cannot leave on Saturday but need to leave on Thursday or Friday? I have saved a ton of money purchasing last minute packages on www.site59.com - Site59 allows you to purchase weekend travel packages (air/car, air/hotel or hotel/car) for travel within 21 days. Quite often, the price of an air/car package is much cheaper than buying just the airfare alone through an airline. It is often advantageous to buy one of the these packages when you need to travel last minute over a weekend regardless of whether you actually use the car or hotel that comes with the airfare.

3) A final suggestion – check out the low cost carriers' websites. Many major web travel sites do not check airfares for various low cost carriers. So, it is important that you individually check the low cost carriers’ websites (Southwest, Airtran, JetBlue, Frontier), especially because these carriers often have reasonable last minute ticket prices.