Watch prices shrink with this nifty little service.

        Courtesy of Etan Horowitz

  Booking A Bargain

Despite Rising Prices, it's still possible to
 score cheap airline tickets.  Here are some strategies
to help keep airline prices down.

Courtesy of Michelle Higgins, The New York Times

There's nothing more frustrating than buying an airline ticket on line and seeing the price drop a few weeks later.  With Yapta you can track a flight so you get alerted when the price drops.  Go to www.yapta.com to get started.

 1.  Enter your email address in the blank field "not a member?  Join now!"  Fill in the information to create a Yapta account and click to join Yapta.  Wait for the confirmation email to arrive,  open the message and click on the confirmation link.

 2.  Once you are signed in to the Yapta site, click on the "get Yapta" tab and download the appropriate version of Yapta.  (You can track flights without downloading Yapta by inputting details of each flight you want to track).

 3.Once you've downloaded and installed Yapta, go to an airline website to search for a flight.  Yapta will automatically detect that you are an airline website, and you'll be asked to "Enable Yapta".  Once you've enabled Yapta, a little icon that says "Tag it with Yapta" will appear next to the different flights.  Click that button to track a particular flight or flights.

 4.  Those trips are now saved in the "My trips" section of your Yapta profile, and you will get an email when the price of those flights drop.  You also can have Yapta email you only when a flight drops below a certain price.  (Yapta does not track the price of Southwest Airlines).
 

Sign up for private price cuts:  Not unlike clothing chains that dole out special "family and friends" discounts to employees and repeat customers, airlines quietly offer special coupon codes to travelers who sign up for their weekly newsletters or frequent flier programs.  Airfarewatchdog.com, which monitors such deals and posts the codes on its web site, reports that it has noticed an increase in deals recently, including new promotion codes in Alaska Airlines newsletters every few weeks with savings typically of 20 percent.

Buy one ticket at a time:  Every flight normally has a range of price levels.  Often, only a couple of coach seats are offered at the lowest prices.  When you shop for multiple tickets, and there aren't enough seats available at the lowest ticket price, the reservation system automatically kicks bookings up to the next price level.

"This happens all the time, as the 'inventory' systems for the airlines decide to start closing out cheap prices on a flight", Rick Seaney, chief executive of Farecompare.com wrote in an e-mail message.  On a recent search for flights from Dallas to Frankfort for a July trip, Seaney turned up a round-trip ticket at AmericanAirLines for $1,431.  When he searched for multiple tickets, the lowest ticket price jumped to $1,536.

Search for flights at alternate airports:  Depending on the distance from your home to the airport, using smaller regional airports can sometimes mean savings.  For example, a recent search for a flight from Midway Airport in Chicago to Orlando, Fla., turned up a ticket on AirTran Airways for $233 round-trip, for a June weekend getaway.  The lowest price for the same trip from O'Hare was $321 on United.

Don't wait if you see a deal:  "If you see an airfare and it looks good to you, don't shop-buy.", said Rein of Travelworm.com.  "It's like wandering around the shopping mall.  You can walk next door looking for a deal, and by the time you walk back it might be gone."