The readers of this blog fall into three major categories: Those who make frequent trips between the U.S. and India, those who make occasional trips between the U.S. and India, and those who would someday like to make a trip between the U.S. and India. Anyone that has given this matter serious thought knows that you can easily spend up to $8,000 on such a trip, just meaning airfare.

But with the rise of websites like expedia.com, orbitz.com, and travelocity.com, it is easy to see you don’t have to. More and more people are finding cheap flights on these travel sites, and therefore, the costs are falling. If you go to these three sites, you will probably find an average cost of $1,800-$2,500 round trip from the northeast U.S. (i.e. New York or Boston) to most Indian metropolis. Most sources confirm these figures. There is a brief analysis of other U.S. and India regions, here.

That’s not a bad price, but if you stop research there, you’re a mad man. If you’re like me, once you find the average price, you don’t expect to pay it, you find a way to beat it. So I did some snooping around the net and developed some search tips for our readers. If you follow our advice, you are sure to find a round trip flight for under $1,800.

Here are some basic search tips:

Be prepared to fly on an odd day of the week. Fri, Sat, Sun, and sometimes even Monday are the busiest flight times, so be flexible. Depart on a Wednesday and return on a Thursday if possible.

Choose your month carefully. By traveling in the early spring or late fall you can get the best deals. Do not fly close to major U.S. holidays like Christmas, Easter, and Thanksgiving, though. Allow a week before or after these days to ensure the best fares. Typically, high summer is the most expensive time to fly.

Experiment with destination and departure cities. You can often save a hundred dollars or more by flying to an airport close to your destination.

Look at as many different websites as possible to check fares. Sometimes you will be surprised by fares at an airline’s own site, especially if they are a smaller airline not crawled by Expedia and the rest.

Sometimes booking at the last minute (days before the flight) can give you much lower fares than booking months in advance.

Smaller airlines are generally better. Not only are they cheaper, but they often offer more amenities and comfort. For example, on EVA airlines, a flight from New York to Bangkok can be had for less than a thousand dollars round trip!

Be careful though, What you sacrifice for these smaller airlines is convenience rather than comfort of price. It may be difficult to find a flight to your required destination, and only a few run out of India.

Give the guy at the ticket booth 50 bucks for his troubles. Just kidding, don’t do that.

So by using these tips, what have I discovered?

The cheapest airfare I found after an hour of searching was $1,200 on StudentUniverse.com. The only drawback to this website is that you must be a student or teacher to get the airfare. Still this is $600 cheaper than even the cheapest flight on Orbitz or Expedia!

My advice, always check and double check prices.

You can find more useful information on how to get the cheapest fares and cheapest accommodations here.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 31st, 2005 at 5:44 pm and is filed under Trends. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.