Where do you find the best deals on international airline tickets?

I’d ask my friend William Shatner AKA the Priceline negotiator

This might involve a lot of searching on your part, and this comes from no first-hand experience, but an economist I know says to buy directly from the airline and to wait until it’s close to the departure date. I don’t know how close, but as the departure date approaches, the airline gets more desperate to sell any empty seats. Though, if you wait too long, they’ll charge way more because then they know you’re desperate.

This only works with one way tickets. You’d have to go through the same process on the way back.

Edit: Also, apparently flying out on a Tuesday will usually get you lower prices, as well.

An aside. My sister will waste 40 hours looking for the best deal and only save 100 bucks. Congrats, you just made barely over two dollars per hour. Just don’t waste tons of hours to save a few bucks.

I normally buy tickets early. I might not get the best deal but I don’t have to stress out about it at the last minute.

Do your research on the major web travel sites: Orbitz, Priceline, etc. Note which airlines they are promoting.

Call those airlines and ask about the fares for the same flights and dates.

The number of airlines that provide flights internationally to Hong Kong is small, so there is not too much you can do to find truly cheap flights.

You might consider also checking flights from LAX. You could book a cheap flight across the US, plus the cost from LAX might be cheaper than a direct flight from NY.

Book WAY ahead. The closer to the flight date you get, the more expensive the tickets.

Booking way ahead will definitely NOT get you a deal. The airlines know they still have a lot of time to fill the plane, so they’re going to try to get as much out of you as possible. The price they charge will go down as it gets closer to departure, to a point. They lose money for every seat on the plane that’s empty, so they’ll lower the price to appeal to more people. However, this doesn’t mean wait until a couple hours before it leaves to buy your ticket. Probably a couple weeks, would be good. By then, they won’t be expecting to get many more passengers, anyway.

The guy I mentioned regularly saves 300–400 dollars this way.

The best price I have now is around $1500. I am hoping to see $1200. I will give my travel agent in Chinatown a call. Because sometimes they have bulk rate that is not available to other resellers (on or offline).

@ckinyc You can get that price in priceline!

www.kayak.com is a good resource. It searches several of the other sites (expedia, orbitz, etc.)