This week we opened our newest car hire office in Bulgaria. The office is located at Varna Airport – Departures Hall, just next to Information desk. It is more convenient and easy to find us now. After arriving at Varna Airport you can go to Departures Hall and hire a car or find us if you have already reserved a vehicle to pick it up. Our newest car hire office in Varna will work from 9:00 to 19:00 every day.

If you haven’t reserved a place where to stay, it’s ok, because we offer accommodation, too. You can book a cheap hotel room or nice apartment in Varna or the whole coastline.

In Sofia, we have new car hire office address few hundred meters away from the airport. You can find the office on 140 Mimi Balkanska str. It is even more convenient now, because it is closer to Sofia Airport.

Easy booking in 3 quick steps. Do not hesitate. If you a new to the online car hire reservations watch our tutorial video and book your car now! In this tutorial we will describe you the whole booking process. You can watch the video here – the official car hire blog ot Top Rent-A-Car, or in our YouTube Channel

The tutorial video will be available in other languages shortly.

Airport Car Hire Bourgas

Since the beginning of 2010, Top Rent A Car has new office desk at Bourgas Airport.

The newest car hire office of Bulgaria’s leading national car hire company will provide excellent car rental service for all tourists arriving at Bourgas Airport. Also,  Top Rent A Car is providing car hire deliveries to all summer resorts in the south coast.

You can find our office in Arrival’s Hall.

View TOP Rent-A-Car Bulgaria – Office Bourgas in a larger map

If you are visiting other Bulgarian cities or resorts, you will probably need car hire service, so you can visit our contact page with information for all car hire offices of Top Rent A Car.

Be Flexible with Your Travel Plans
Airlines prices tickets differently depending on the day of the week, time of year, and nearest holiday.  If you are not flexible in the dates you want to fly, you will never be able to get in on the bottom and find a cheap flight. Airline ticket prices fluctuate wildly. Even the difference of a day can mean the difference of hundreds of dollars. It’s always cheaper to fly during the middle of the week than on a weekend since most people travel on the weekends and airlines hike their prices. If you fly after a major holiday, prices are also a bit cheaper. Early morning or late night flights are also cheaper because few people want to fly on them. Be flexible in your plans and you will find more cheap flights. A day can be a world of difference. Remember too that prices drop during the weekdays so it is better to book mid week.

Fly into Secondary Airports
Every major city in the world has a smaller, secondary airport. This airport is typically further from the city center and a bit smaller. Budget airlines usually use these airports because of cheaper operational costs. Cheaper costs mean cheaper tickets. It is why Southwest never flies into a major airport. Compared to the rest of the world, the United States does not have many of these carriers. You will find a plethora in Europe and Asia though. Don’t expect any perks on these airlines- you are simply buying space on the plane. No food, drink, pillow, or peanuts.  But for what they lack in service they make up for in cheap tickets. If your destination has a secondary airport, consider flying on one of these discount carriers for a cheaper ticke.t

Fly Alternative Routes
Besides being flexible with your travel dates, you should also be flexible in how you get to your destination. Sometimes it is cheaper to go to Madrid and  then take a cheap flight to Rome than flying directly into Rome. There are so many budget airlines that it is often better to use them as a connecting flight. Direct flights always cost more so try to add some stops into your ticket to help bring the cost down. Also consider working various airlines and special offers. Mix and match can help save you a lot of money. However, doing this is not easy and requires a bit more work and research.  If you have a really tight budget, the work will yield some cheaper flights though.

Search an Airline’s Foreign Website
You may not know it but you can book on an airlines foreign counterpart. If you have a strong currency, book on a weaker currency’s airline page. For example, we have found cheaper tickets searching the NZ version of Air New Zealand’s website than by searching our local version. The same goes for tickets to and from Europe cheaper. By searching the Canadian version of the British Airways website, we got cheaper tickets to London.This method may work best if your currency is doing well but you could still probably save some money even if the currencies are the same because of taxes and fees.

If You are a Student, Get Your Discount!
If you are a student, you’ll find that there are many discounts available to you. You can find flexible student airline tickets, discount cards, cheaper train tickets, and much more. All you need is a student ID. A great place to find cheap flights is to use STA Travel. They specialize in student travel and can usually find some great deals for students.

Sign Up for a Rewards Program
Airline rewards programs are a great way to get free flights, free upgrades, and free companion tickets. If you aren’t a frequent flier, it will take a long time to get points but if you are a frequent flier, you should sign up for a rewards program so you can get freebies. For the infrequent flier, consider a general rewards credit card that you can redeem for a free flight.

Sign up for Airline Newsletters
Stay informed of all the recent flight promotions and deals by signing up to a few airline or industry newsletters. You never know when a 24 hr fire sale might occur and you’ll want to be right there when it does. Often these newsletters are the only way to hear about these deals. It only takes a few clicks and you can delete the newsletters when you aren’t interested in flying.

“Airport luggage scales often lie.”

It’s bad enough that the airlines charge a fee for overweight luggage, varying from $39 to $300 per bag industrywide. But it’s galling that they may also hit you with the fee by mistake.

At JFK last November, New York City’s Department of Consumer Affairs found that 14 percent of the airport’s scales were not properly calibrated.

At Boston’s Logan airport, 10 percent of the scales recently inspected gave incorrect readings.

The South Florida Sun Sentinel has discovered numerous busted scales at area airports.

And the list goes on.

What to do? Stand up for yourself, especially when a scale barely tips the balance into the “overweight” category.

Brandon Macsata, executive editor of the D.C.-based lobbying group Association for Airline Passenger Rights advises passengers to weigh their bags at home first, and if the airport scale comes up with a different number, insist that your bags be weighed on a different scale.

Yes, it’s come to that.

“Our air may make you sick.”

The Federal Aviation Administration is investigating whether potentially harmful fumes have been circulating in airplane cabins.

Between 1999 and 2008, air became contaminated on 926 flights, reports the FAA, without specifying any possible health risks.

Currently, the agency is looking at a particular type of “fume event” that involves “bleed air,” or air that’s been compressed by the airplane’s engines.

If there’s a malfunction in plane equipment, the air that’s fed into the cabin can be contaminated with chemical residues from engine oil — specifically TCP, or tricresyl phosphate.

“Passengers may have symptoms like tremors,” says Clement Furlong, a research professor of genome sciences and medicine at the University of Washington.

So far, federal reviews of the research have been inconclusive about whether bleed air actually endangers the health of passengers and flight crews, though two civil lawsuits about fume events are under way.

“That nonstop flight you booked? We can add a layover to it — without explanation.”

Think you scored a sweet fare on that transcontinental flight? Think again.

You may be making a previously unscheduled layover. Airlines can cancel your nonstop and rebook passengers onto flights with connections, which are obviously less desirable.

Advises Brett Snyder, author of “The Cranky Flier” and a former pricing analyst at America West: As soon as you find out that your nonstop flight has been canceled, check to see if there’s another nonstop option. If there is, call the airline and ask — nicely — to be put on it.

But if nonstop service on the route has disappeared, threaten to switch to another carrier for the trip. Major airlines will typically agree to refund your money without any fees if you refuse to accept a new, multistop flight that will arrive at your destination more than two hours later than you were originally scheduled.

“We wouldn’t tell you right away if there’s an emergency.”

The FAA leaves it up to the airline to decide if it wants to tell passengers about an engine failure or other significant crisis. And many flight crews opt to keep their lips sealed.

The reason? Flight crews don’t want to scare passengers or say something they’ll regret later.

“In one recent emergency, the cockpit crew was faulted for making a public announcement before some of the required procedures were accomplished,” explains Kent Wien, a pilot for a U.S. carrier.

So attendants tend to err on the side of being secretive to avoid trouble.

Last June, passengers traveling from Brussels to Newark on Continental Airlines were not informed when the captain died during the flight. The plane continued along its scheduled route with nary a peep from the rest of the crew, beyond a cryptic question: “Is there a doctor on board?”

“When we let you pick your seat assignment, we were only joking.”

As the airlines decrease the number of seats they fly in an attempt to eke out a profit, they’re swapping out larger planes for smaller ones more often.

Whenever fliers are put on a new plane, seat assignments are scrambled. A traveler may end up in a middle seat he or she would never have selected.

If it happens to you, there’s not much you can do — airlines aren’t obligated to honor any seat assignment.

“Passengers are actually purchasing a fare and not a seat,” says Macsata of the Association for Airline Passenger Rights.

Checking in online 24 hours prior to departure is often the best you can do to boost your chances of getting the seat assignment you want. Print your boarding pass with your seat assignment on it before you get to the airport as proof in case you need to argue with a gate agent over a last-minute switcheroo.

“Our planes are antiques.”

Compared to the rest of the world, we’re flying the airplane equivalent of grandma’s Cutlass Supreme — except Uncle Sam isn’t interested in paying cash for these clunkers.

American owns 268 MD-80 class airplanes, with an average age of 18 years old. Meanwhile, thanks to a geriatric fleet of DC-9s, Delta and Northwest’s average fleet age is 13 years old.

In contrast, Emirates has an average fleet age of about 5 years. Singapore Air’s is 6 years. And, while Ryanair is often faulted for lacking basic amenities, its planes average less than 3 years of age.

Luckily, U.S. airlines aren’t having problems maintaining their aging aircraft from a safety standpoint, notes Bill Voss, president and CEO of the Flight Safety Foundation. “There’s no real indication of anyone cutting corners,” says Voss. “Planes don’t age like wine, but they do remain flight-worthy with proper maintenance.”

The FAA doesn’t have a maximum age limit for planes, though it does require more frequent inspections for planes that have flown for more than 14 years.

So if you’ve ever wished you had a personal seatback flat-screen TV instead of having to share a view of a cathode-ray tube in the aisle — well, now you know the reason.

“Our crew is totally exhausted.”

Airline jobs are famously hard on the Circadian rhythms, and flight crews simply aren’t getting enough rest.

Pilot fatigue has been a factor in crashes that have led to over 250 fatalities in the past 16 years, including the recent crash of a Colgan Air flight to Buffalo, according to the National Transportation Safety Board. The night before that accident, the copilot commuted from the West Coast to Newark while the pilot slept on a couch in a crew lounge at the airport.

Crews on reserve (that is, crews readily available for service on short notice) don’t have it much better. “On reserve, we don’t have control over what we’re doing,” says Heather Poole, a flight attendant for a U.S. carrier and a contributor to travel blog Gadling. “One day we’re flying a 5 a.m. departure, and the next day we’re working a red-eye. Do this for a few trips in a row — add the delays in there — and that’s when it gets bad.”

Working reserve can stretch crews to the limit. “Once during a terrible reserve month, I remember staring at my emergency exit door, thinking, Is it armed? Is it armed? Is it armed? I could see that it was, indeed, armed (the evacuation slide was attached to the door properly). But it wasn’t clicking in my brain because I was so tired.”

“Your ticket might not be with the airline you booked.”

Two airlines may sell seats on the same flight, a sales strategy called code sharing. You may think you’ll be traveling on one airline, but you actually fly on another.

The situation seems harmless enough but can cause major headaches for passengers. For example, most major airlines farm out their short, commuter flights to regional airlines.

“By and large, you haven’t heard of Chautauqua or Republic, but you may be flying them when you click to buy a ticket on Continental,” explains Randy Petersen, publisher of InsideFlyer. “With two airlines involved, there’s a constant passing of the buck. Worse, many regional carriers operating on code shares are exempt from reporting their on-time statistics. And God forbid if you need to file a claim with them for lost baggage.”

Back in the Middle Ages of air travel, airlines used to publish their rates in telephone-book-sized compendiums updated every few weeks, and your trusty travel agent would actually get on the phone to reserve your seat. Nowadays, fares change as often as the weather in New England. The good news? Ever-evolving technology now lets airlines sell unused seats at the last minute at a variety of venues, producing some of the cheapest prices ever. The bad news? With a glut of information out there, finding these fares can be a bewildering, confusing, and downright frustrating experience.

“There is no magic formula for always finding the cheapest fares,” says Terrance Zepke, author of the Encyclopedia of Cheap Travel. “Comparison shopping is the name of the game.” But don’t take that to mean you should spend more time hunting for your vacation airfare than you’ll actually spend on vacation. We won’t lie to you; the world of inexpensive airfares is dog-eat-dog. But follow these efficient steps, learn some simple tricks, and with a little bit of luck, you will excel in sniffing out the best online airfare deals.

SIX STEPS TO CHEAP TICKETS
#1: FIGURE OUT THE BEST TIME TO BUY
Your first step to airfare success is to determine the best time to buy your tickets. If you absolutely must get home to Mom for Thanksgiving—or to Courchevel before Lance passes through—the age-old advice still holds true: Buy your tickets at least three weeks in advance.

“I think most airline sources would agree that anything outside 21 days before takeoff is considered an advance-purchase ticket,” says Brian Ek of Priceline.com. “Airlines are different, but generally, once you hit 15 days before the flight, the price begins to go up, then it goes up again at the seven-day mark. So if you want a retail ticket, buy it at least 21 days out for the best price.” Consider buying retail and buying early for vacation destinations during popular seasons or during high-traffic holidays like Christmas, Thanksgiving, and spring break in March.

However, if your trip to Whistler can wait a weekend or Mom doesn’t mind you arriving on Thanksgiving day rather than the day before, consider changing your strategy. Timing when you fly is just as important as when you buy. Though airfares can be fickle and inconsistent, cheaper flights are typically available on weekdays, as opposed to weekends, and during non-rush hours. If you can’t avoid major holidays, like Christmas, New Year’s, Thanksgiving, national long-weekend holidays, and spring break periods in March, a good rule of thumb is to try to travel when everyone else doesn’t want to. Think Christmas Eve or day, Thanksgiving day or a week ahead of time. Besides, flying on a holiday is typically more relaxed—the airports and planes are usually less crowded, and the “we’re all in this together” atmosphere can lend to an easy-going travel experience.

#2: UNLEASH THE SEARCH ENGINES
You know where you want to go and when. Mouse in hand, you approach the glaring, daunting screen of your computer. Task number one: Do a drive-by of the big search engines like Travelocity, Orbitz, Expedia, and Cheaptickets. Consider this as a fact-finding mission: a survey of these sites will give you a good idea on the average going rate for a retail ticket.

These search engines also offer a variety of search flexibility. Orbitz and Travelocity both allow you to search multiple dates—or even whole months—so you can compare rates and plan on traveling on the least expensive day.

Also keep in mind that ticket prices can vary drastically by airport. If you’re flying out of Boston, try Providence. San Francisco? Think Oakland. How about Charlotte? Consider Greensboro. Cheaptickets and Travelocity both have tools for searching multiple airports to come up with the best rate based on proximity, while Orbitz will automatically search all airports associated with a particular destination (for example, searches for Washington, D.C., yields results on Reagan, Dulles, and Baltimore-Washington airports).

#3: ON TO THE AGGREGATORS
A new breed of search engine has cropped up in the past few years: the aggregator site. Sites like Qixo, Kayak, and SideStep search a whole flock of search engines as well as airline sites themselves. Why go the extra step? Many of the budget airlines that have great inexpensive fares, like Southwest, don’t do business with consolidators like Travelocity, so by searching only those sites, you’re missing half the market. Our favorite is Mobissimo, which on multiple comparisons brought up the lowest fares most quickly.

#4: GO DIRECTLY TO AIRLINE WEBSITES
You’ve found the cheapest dates and the best airport, and now you think you’ve found the cheapest fare. Not so fast—you’ve got one more step. If you’ve found a great deal on an America West flight, check out America West’s website. Why? You’ll often find a better deal directly from the airline. And even if price is the same, buying directly from the airline will save you the search engine’s booking fee—usually around $5—and you’ll have a better chance at changing tickets or refunding your money if something goes wrong. Finally, some airlines guarantee the lowest rates from their own websites, backed up with special offers for those who find cheaper fares elsewhere.

That said, if you found an eye-popping deal on a search engine that utilizes multiple carriers, take it—the hassle of pricing individual flights in a multiple-leg, multiple-carrier itinerary will drive you batty, to say nothing of accidentally landing in New York’s JFK Airport when you fly out of La Guardia in 15 minutes.

#5: PERUSE THE BUDGET AIRLINES’ WEBSITES
To go the extra mile, quickly eyeball the budget airlines’ websites that fly out of the airports nearest you. Often, their rates manage to fly, so to speak, under the radar of the major search engines, so it can pay to target them directly. On a recent check, Airtran posted $76 fares between Philadelphia and Fort Lauderdale, Southwest had fares for $99 or less from more than 30 cities, and JetBlue had fares from numerous cities starting at $39. Frontier, Independence Air, Spirit, and ATA also post web deals. Many of these low-cost airlines also have weekly or monthly newsletters that announce web-only deals, which is a great way to keep abreast of new deals.

#6: TRY BIDDING ON A PRICE
If you still haven’t found an airfare that fits within your budget, try bidding. Yes, Priceline.com is still alive and kicking. In fact, the site now offers retail tickets in addition to the name-your-price game. But there are a few other players out there, like SkyAuction.com, which also posts deals and takes bids eBay-style.

Determining a bid that’s low but not impossible is a fine art elucidated only by date and destination. Aim too low and you’re wasting your time, aim too high and…well, you know. To start, take the lowest price from the industry-standard search engines (step #2) and the aggregators (#3), knock off 15 to 20 percent, and, using the same search criteria, go from there. Keep in mind, each bidding site likely has its own quirks and tricks. To put more than luck on your side, check out Biddingfortravel.com for additional tips on playing the auction game.

Hotwire.com offers a slight twist on the typical bidding game. Rather than asking you to bid, you enter in your trip info and they generate a deeply discounted clearance price, which is often the best deal going. The catch? All you get is the price of the flight—you don’t see the flight schedule or what airline (or airlines) you’re flying until after purchasing the ticket. For people with flexible schedules, this is a manageable hassle, but if you need to put in a half-day before flying off to the Caribbean, Hotwire.com can be gamble.

LET THE EXPERTS DO THE WORK FOR YOU
Along with the other billion (or so it seems) travel-deal websites out there, there is a unique species that monitors the search engines and airline sites and highlights the best deals. SmarterTravel.com continually updates postings on the most outrageous plane ticket, hotel, car, and cruise sales, and has a team of editors that post travel-tip articles for these ever-changing times. Bestfares.com has a search engine and keeps excellent tabs on fare wars between airlines, such as when a particular city might be the center of downward-spiraling fares for a limited period of time.

Some sites, like adventure-centric GORPtravel.com, also specialize in a particular niche of travel, offering package trips that take care of all the details. Costs vary widely, and in some cases airfare isn’t included in the quoted price, but the expertise afforded by working with industry leaders could offer the assurance you need to make your vacation stress free.

THE LOWDOWN ON COURIER FLIGHTS
So many budget travelers have discovered the air courier trick that flights to Sydney for a quarter and a smile are more fiction than fact. However, there is still a nice load of mind-bogglingly cheap ones—provided you’re willing to make a few trade-offs. Here’s the deal: By law, all baggage on commercial flights must be accompanied by a passenger. For many companies, sending goods on commercial flights with a passenger is far faster than shipping, so they look for passengers willing to fly on short notice, with great flexibility, and with no personal baggage other than carry-ons. The upshot as a courier is that all you really have to do is pack frugally, sit on a plane, carry the customs papers, and hook up with the appropriate contacts at the airport, and you’ll get great fares: Think Amsterdam for $125 or Bangkok for $275. Membership to the Air Courier Association or the International Association of Air Travel Couriers costs about $50 and gets you access to detailed information on the courier life and daily flight options. But keep in mind: flexibility is key—if you’re aching for a two-week break from a grueling nine-to-five gig that can’t be left at a moment’s notice, courier flights probably won’t work. But if you’ve got some flex in your schedule, it’s a great way to save cash and see the world.

LAST-MINUTE SEATS FOR SALE
Airtech targets a similarly flexible demographic as courier agencies, but puts passengers on empty or standby seats at the last minute. If you’re flexible with your dates and destinations, you can get pretty sweet deals, like a flight to Europe for about $200. First, buy a FlightPass for travel between certain regions, say the U.S. and Europe, with a departure window of two to four days. When a flight comes up to your preferred destination, you’ll get a call. If it fits you desires and interests, you head to the airport and redeem your pass for the tickets. Think of it as the budget traveler’s way of flying on standby. One intrepid traveler used Airtech to get home to Greece for the 2004 Olympics. She got the call—a flight to Amsterdam from Washington, D.C., for around $200—and headed out that afternoon. After a leisurely day in the Netherlands, she hopped a train south to Athens and reached her destination for half of what it would’ve cost had she flown direct. Plus she got to go to Amsterdam. But if you need to be in a certain city at a certain time, Airtech ain’t for you.

SMALL-SCALE AND CHARTER AIRLINES
Small-scale airlines and some charter services often offer specially scheduled or seasonal flights to high-traffic destinations for low rates. USA 3000 Airlines flies from Midwest and Northeast cities to vacation destinations in Florida, the Dominican Republic, and Mexico for fares 20 to 60 percent cheaper than major carriers’ fares, depending on the city. Sun Country Airlines is another small carrier based in Minnesota with flights to more than 40 domestic, Caribbean, and Mexican destinations. Especially at the last minute, rates can be significantly cheaper than those of Northwest, Sun Country’s biggest competitor. When purchasing tickets, be aware of restrictions on refunds and rescheduling after missed connections with other carriers. To find small carriers, look up a full list of airlines that service your local airport.

ROUND-THE-WORLD TICKETS
Long to follow in Magellan’s footsteps? Do not buy a slew of disparate tickets around the world. You can save thousands of dollars for your on-the-ground travels by purchasing a round-the-world ticket. Several companies, like Airtreks and Air Brokers International can help arrange complicated global itineraries, sometimes for discounted prices. Also try the airlines directly for their latest fares. The One World Alliance, a group of eight airlines, including American, British Airways, and Qantas, offers around-the-world tickets with up to 20 segments (geo-specific regions of travel). SkyTeam, an alliance of nine airlines, including Continental, Delta, Air France, and KLM, offers round-the-world fares with over 650 stops to choose from.

AIR PASSES
Okay, so you’re not planning on circumnavigating the earth anytime soon, but how about a little continental perambulation? There are plenty of smaller-scale deals with specific airlines and alliances that can save you tons on intra-continental travel. For example, the Star Alliance, a group of 16 airlines, including United, Lufthansa, Thai Airways, and Air Canada, offers discounted air passes for Europe, North America, Asia, and the South Pacific, among others. Passengers buy between three and ten coupons starting at $65 each, which are then redeemable for single-segment flights between any of the alliance’s destinations in the given region. Similar deals are also available within certain countries, with deals on international airfare and a set number of intra-country flights. For example, Qantas, in association with Tourism Australia, currently offers international airfare and three domestic flights for prices starting at $999, far cheaper than any other DIY pricing available. The best way to track down packages like this is to check the websites of the national airlines or the country’s tourism website, easily accessible via Google.

If it’s not one thing, it’s another. You think you’ve scored a great airfare to Europe, only to be hit with a fuel surcharge that adds almost a third onto the price. You show up at the airport, packed and ready to go, and discover that second bag you’re checking is going to add an additional $50 round-trip onto the cost of your trip. You’re desperately trying to budget for your big vacation, but every time you research possible airfares, the price has crept up, once again.

While there’s no way to avoid the fuel surcharge, and baggage charges on certain airlines can only be avoided by packing light (a good lesson for us all), airfares are slippery devils that can (sometimes) be tamed. The following tried-and-true methods should help you snag a decent — or possibly free — airfare, a ticket so low in price that — hopefully — those invidious extra charges won’t hurt so much.

Search smart
As creatures of habit, most of us tend to use the same travel sites over and over again. Problem is, there’s no one travel Web site that always provides the best airfare. Just because you once found a terrific fare to London on, say, Expedia, doesn’t guarantee that it won’t be undercut by Travelocity the next time. Or that the fares being sold directly on the sites of American Airlines, Delta, British Airways or what have you, might not offer the best value of all.

But searching multiple sites is not only time-consuming, it’s tedious. The solution? Surf to an “aggregator” site. These are Internet services that don’t sell travel. Instead, they simply “Google” airfares and other types of travel products, scanning all the prices offered by the individual airlines, as well as those from Travelocity, Expedia, Orbitz, Opodo, Ebookers, Hotwire and the like. This results in a deeper and more impartial search. If you end up buying an airfare through one of the aggregators, you don’t pay a booking fee (as you will with the “Big Three”); instead, the site you purchased from pays a small finder’s fee to the aggregator site.

Among the many aggregator sites in business, I’ve had the best luck with Sidestep.com and its new owner, Kayak.com, as well as Mobissimo.com and Momondo.com. You’ll see why in the following searches I did recently. The savings range from piddling to impressive, but you’ll note that the aggregator always wins (and no, I didn’t cherry-pick these results):

*Chicago to Rome, Italy round-trip in mid-April
Orbitz price: $855, Sidestep price: $761. Savings: $94

*Cleveland to Houston, round-trip in late May
Travelocity price: $235, Kayak price: $230. Savings: $5

*Minneapolis to Cancun, round-trip in late March
Expedia price: $358, Sidestep price: $345. Savings: $10

*Las Vegas to Honolulu, round-trip in late June
Orbitz price: $492, Mobissimo price (found at Orbitz) $490. Savings: $2

*New York to Hong Kong, round-trip late August
Expedia price: $1,174, Mobissimo price $1,022. Savings: $152

Pretty interesting, huh? The point here is: You generally won’t miss out on a special being offered by the “Big Three” by searching in this fashion. If the price Orbitz, Expedia or Travelocity is offering is the best one, it will usually pop up on the aggregator sites, too.

Book at the right time
It’s no secret that there are seasons in travel, and that going to a destination at a time of year when no one else is going (October for the Caribbean, February for Europe, July for Australia, for example) is a sure way to save money. There are also often less expensive days to fly during the month; all of the Web sites mentioned above offer their users handy-dandy calendars to identify those dates.

But booking travel at the right time can also yield savings. When you book too far in advance, say 10 months before you plan to travel, the airlines know that you really want to travel at that time, and are unlikely to offer any discounts. The same with traveling at the very last minute: Most people who do book in the week or two before their departure have to travel…and so the crafty carriers take ’em for all they can.

Smartest time to purchase is between 24 days and two months of your departure. It’s during this period that the airlines are doing some soul searching … or at least yield management. You see, airfares are based on supply and demand (and, increasingly, fuel costs). If the demand is low on a certain set of flights, the airline execs don’t really start to panic until about six weeks in advance of those flights, and that’s when they throw a sale. Book too early or too late, and you won’t see ’em sweat.

Conversely, weekends are often the worst days of the week to book because a) you’re less likely to hit a new sale (the execs are home watering their lawns) and b) most Americans are off work on the weekend and therefore wait to book their travel until then. The airlines are aware of this pattern, and so prices can rise slightly on weekends.

One word on holiday fares: Throw all rules out the window for these. Fares are rarely discounted around Christmas, New Year’s, Thanksgiving or the Fourth of July, and planes can sell out. For these periods, I recommend booking at least two and a half months in advance, to guarantee you get a seat. If low prices are a priority, book on the holiday itself. You may miss the turkey or the carols, but you’ll pay much less than those who flew in a comfortable day or two before the big event.

Don’t forget frequent-flier miles
I know, I know: Redeeming those “magic miles” can be an exercise in frustration. Ten times as many travelers as a decade ago are competing for a dwindling number of seats. (The airlines have always set aside roughly 11 percent of their inventory for award mileage members. However, most airlines are flying fewer and smaller planes today, in an attempt to maximize profits.) But when you do snag a mileage seat, that bit of good fortune can make the difference between being able to afford that vacation and not.

The keys to using your frequent-flier miles are flexibility and persistence. For most airlines, award mileage seats open up to booking 330 days in advance of departure. If you can, try to go online then to snag a seat. But don’t take a “no” as definitive. Yield management dictates when frequent-flier seats are released, and you may find that a “no” in April has transformed into a “yes” in May.

This is particularly true if you can be flexible about the dates you fly, and the airports you’re flying into. As I said before, flexibility is the secret to getting the most use from your miles.

Believe it or not, you can also be flexible in your choice of airlines; your reward miles won’t only work with the carrier you’re most loyal to, but also with their code-share partners. So if your miles are all with American Airlines, they will also work on Aer Lingus, Alaska Airlines, British Airways, Cathay Pacific, LAN Airlines, Japan Airlines, Qantas, Iberia and several others. If you’re with Delta, you can use Alaska Airlines, Avianca, China Airlines and Royal Air Maroc. People on the United program should look as well at US Airways, Air Canada, Air China, Lufthansa, SAS, bmi, THAI and a number of other carriers. Because the airlines don’t post the inventory from their partners online, book the old-fashioned way. Pick up a phone to call the reservations center and make it clear that you want to get the lay of the land, not just for the airline you’re calling, but also for its partners. Booking by phone will add about $25 to the cost of your ticket, but you’ll increase your chances of actually finding a flight by a good 30 percent.

Finally, the only way to use frequent-flier miles is to accumulate enough of them. So it’s a good idea to be loyal to one airline when you can and to work the system to build up a large stockpile of miles. This might include getting miles through a credit card, staying at hotels that offer air miles, buying groceries through stores that give miles (yup, you can actually do that), ordering flowers, getting magazine subscriptions … you name it. There are few activities in the inventory of American behavior today that don’t seem to have a mileage value attached! One warning about those mileage credit cards: They often come with significantly higher user fees attached. So if you’re the type of person who has difficulty paying bills on time, these cards may end up being downright dangerous.

However you get there, remember that in this case, it’s the destination and NOT the journey that’s important. Flying is only a means to an end, and that end is a worthy one: Experiencing the world.

Ease and efficiency of transactions – from booking through to check-in – are important for business and leisure travellers alike, and Cheapflights.co.uk, the UK’s leading flight comparison website, has compiled a guide to e-services on most of the world’s leading airlines.

“I take advantage of e-services wherever I can,” says Francesca Ecsery, Global Sales Director of Cheapflights. “For the savvy traveller, it’s the quickest, most efficient method not only for finding the best deals but also for booking them, when arriving at the airport for check-in and planning extras on your trip. Most airlines offer online booking and check-in services, but there are a wealth of other niche services allowing holidaymakers to get on with their holiday with ease and minimum fuss.”

Cheapflights.co.uk’s latest tips page outlines 21 of the world’s top airlines, comparing five key online services including booking, online and mobile check-in, refunds and car rental.

Only four of the 20 global airlines researched offer all five areas – BMI, British Airways, Emirates and Singapore Airlines. The three US flagship carriers – American Airlines, Continental Airlines and Northwest Airlines – also offer all five online options but their mobile check-in option is only valid for the US.

A relative newcomer to the world of mobile check-in is budget airline easyJet, which will offer the service from October 2009.

Most services across all airlines are offered free of charge, with the exception of online refunds, where four airlines carry a fee.