How do I book air tickets

After introducing ITA Matrix and finding a most suitable credit card, let's talk about how do I book air tickets.

Build a list

  Do you have a list of places you'd want to go? Write it down or just remember it, preferably match it to a time you'd want to go. After all, you may not necessary want to go to Oslo right before Christmas where shops close early and daylight hour is short.

Learn the abbreviations

  At the very least, learn the airport codes of your nearby airport and your target destination airport. A lot of deal blog/website/forum puts these information on the title so that their readers can quickly identify the routes that interest them. Also, remember twitter's 140-character limit? That's also another reason to learn these abbreviations so that you only need to read about deals that's relevant to you.

Sense the value
  
  When I first start looking for air fare, I often dwell on the absolute "cheapest" fare; for example, I would be upset if the ticket price drop $50 a week after I purchase my $300 round-trip ticket from WAS-SNA. It doesn't help when soon after, anyone could view the fare history of selected market from Farecast (subsequently bought out by MicroSoft and becomes Bing travel). I have learned from that now and realized that I could be preparing for the trip during the time of mourning. If the price is good and your schedule works, just go for it. $300 round trip to Dublin is great but $500 is not such a bad price either.
  But what is a good price, if you ask me, in addition to the historical price chart many sites now presents to you (e.g. Kayak, Google Flight), one more way I've learned is using the metric of cost per mile (CPM); basically it measures the amount of miles you'd be earning and calculates how much you're paying (based on airfare) for each mile. In general, 6 cpm is a great catch but depends on your situation (e.g. hot place like Maldives or Paris), 10-15 cpm may not be a bad price. Again, if you're doing the calculation on your own, the mileage summary provided by ITA Matrix is a great tool (just remember, your mileage may vary (YMMV)).

Be on the lookout

  Now this is the most important part: use the tools available to you that meets your lifestyle. Most of us have our jobs and commitments and can not afford to be checking ITA Matrix every hour for every places you'd want to go. Thanks to internet, there are many people who's more than happy to do it for us and all you have to do is keep an eye out for it. The blogs/websites/forums I am following are listed on the main page of this blog. Some of those will be listed below so that readers can follow them: The Flight Deal, Air Fare Watchdog, The Points Guy, FlyerTalk. These are all good sites with rich information on travel deals that you can follow. I have subscribed to most of them on at least twitter or RSS and have my phone notify me (e.g., via IFTTT) when new contents arrives. It gets easier once you know all the abbreviations; then you can scan through the headlines and decide if this is a deal you'd want to investigate further. Sometimes deals posted on this are gone within hours (e.g. the $300 NYC-Dublin deal). And one last thing, in general, if you're not sure about some of the deals you see, you should stop doubting if you can see the deal being mentioned on slickdeals with high level of discussion. Most people on slickdeals are hunting for things other than travel and if such travel deals gets their attention, it is usually something really good.

Plan ahead

  Obviously, with fares gone within hours like those mentioned above, it helps if you can afford to be flexible on your schedules. However, what if you're not. For example, I have to be home for Thanksgiving every year or I can't leave until the kids are having summer vacation. In these situation, I recommend devoting some time every week (e.g. 1-2 hours) at least 3 months in advance and start searching. Of course you can also set up fare alert on one of the websites that offers these service and have them notify you. Your searching frequency should increase as your planned travel dates are closer. And as usual, act fast once you've found the nice price and start planning the rest of the trip.

  
Conclusion

  Well, this is about it. In general, you can be efficient at grabbing good air fares when you 1) know what you are looking for, 2) know what's a good price, 3) know where to look, 4) know to act fast when good things come, and 5) know to spend time searching regularly. So good hunting, everyone.