§   Air Travel Center is a website that teaches you how to build your own flight itinerary and write yourself a discount; even when none are offered by airlines and agencies. The vast and complex air travel industry is explained and flight search engines are deployed in sufficient number to give you access to all of the published and most of the privately held fares available across the globe. Even the largest of online travel agencies access only a small portion of all flights and fares available. No single resource will ever access all available flights and fares but the Air Travel Center does the next best thing. It aggregates the inventories of more than 700 airlines and over a hundred airline consolidators based on six continents and accesses those inventories with flight search engines arranged by world region of departure. With all those tools and with the knowledge that you can acquire at the Center, you can do for yourself what travel agents cannot.

§   The Center is organized by world region of departure for shopping airline flights and fares and by travel product type and by tool type for looking up information. Each airline ticket booking engine (flight search engine) will access a different database of different flights and different fares. No need to shop them all, but using several of them is essential to discovering all available flights and prices. The same is true if shopping for a room or a rental car or a vacation package. Even the meta search products that tout access to hundreds of travel sites with one click are more severely limited in actual reach than commonly known. No single resource will ever be devised to access all available travel products in all available global distribution sytems, in all privately held databases to pull up all available public and private fares and rates. At the Center, you have access to most. You also have access to just about any bit and every bit of information regarding travel that you might want to look up. The only requirement of you is your time and your effort to learn. No fees, no subscriptions, no scams, no spam, no bias beyond screening the companies presented to you for quality and performance.

¶   Experience has proven, across time, across the globe, that each and every minute devoted to strategic airfare and travel shopping will save, at very least, one dollar. Depending upon your travel situation and the number of travelers, your total savings can amount to hundreds of dollars or a thousand, or even more. Pay yourself a respectable payment for your time and effort. You will earn it. You are worthy of it.

¶   Javascript and cookies power all of the shopping and buying tools found at the Center. These are technical functions that make it possible and easy for you to meet your own needs. They have everything to do with your computer and our computer and alliance computers learning how to work together - but nothing to do with identifying you or capturing information about you.

¶   Internet booking engines (flight search, room search, car search, vacation search, cruise search) allow you to input the itinerary you want to travel on and get search results that try to match what you input. When you use an Internet booking engine, your order is sent into the airline computer system (hotel,car,vacation,cruise) and into the consolidator or broker or agency computer system. Your order initiates a process that involves verification of available seats (rooms,cars,cabins) and available slots in the contract allotment for that price on that date among many other checks. The initial confirmation email that you receive indicates that your order was successfully received and that the processing of your order has begun. Only when all processing is complete will payment be taken and tickets issued. Some travel products permit a partial payment to reserve and full payment later to travel. A charter airline can permit a down payment to reserve and full payment later but scheduled airlines cannot. Full payment must be made to reserve a seat, but, your payment will not be collected until all checks and processes have been completed and cleared. Payment is, then, collected and tickets issued. You might notice that all scheduled airlines give notice that no price is guaranteed until tickets are issued.

§   Five rules of air travel shopping:

¶   The prime rule of travel shopping online or offline is to check at least three resources before booking. No single source will ever have the best product at the best price all of the time.

¶   The second rule is acknowledging the volatile nature of travel pricing and availability. Fares and rates will vary with numerous factors, fluctuate often, and expire rapidly. Travel products are finite. Airlines cannot manufacture one more seat, hotels cannot build one more room, and rental companies cannot make one more car to meet your need. When you see an available product or service at a price you are content to pay, it seems wise to secure it before someone else does.

¶   The third rule is acknowledging the complex nature of travel products and services. Travel products and services are offered in commercial and regulatory environments which require contracts, terms, rules, procedures, and restrictions. A little time devoted toward becoming familiar with product and service specifications is time well spent. You will better understand what you are buying and be better prepared for any of those ‘what if’ situations that might arise.

¶   The fourth rule is patience. At any moment more than 700 scheduled air carriers worldwide are offering such an array of flights and code shares and class assignments and specials that many millions of different airfares are available on a given date. Add to that the privately held airfares that are negotiated or prepaid by nearly 4000 companies worldwide. Each company operates their own database of itineraries and airfares. The aggregate total of privately held airfares dwarfs the numbers published by airlines. Public and private airfare totals are overwhelming. Hundreds of databases hold all that inventory and no single access point online or offline will ever be feasable. What you pay for your seat is a product of the knowledge and strategy and time you spend upon shopping.

¶   The fifth rule is timing. Since allotments to consolidators might be as few as four seats on a given date for a given flight and since discounted ticket prices are always limited in number, the early shopper will find them and the later shopper will not know that the lower prices ever existed. Consolidators will often sell out their inventory during the first few weeks of a new contract. Discounted seats will often be sold off during the first hours or days after being posted. Shopping in the wee hours of the morning will often put you first in line for that days discounts and shopping during the first few days of a newly active consolidator contract period will often enable you to buy airline tickets at prices other shoppers will never see. For example, people who shop in January and February for flights that depart during the first six to nine months of each year will often pay low prices that later shoppers will never see.

If you can shop online during the early hours of each day, you can be first in line and have a better chance to buy airline tickets at newly posted discount prices. If you can take off before 08:00 or after 19:00, you can enjoy the lowest prices of the day. If you can depart on Tuesday or Wednesday, you can enjoy the lowest prices of the week. If you can depart on Thursday or Saturday, you can enjoy the second lowest prices of the week. If you can travel January 15 through March 15, you can pay the lowest prices of the year. By traveling from March 15 through May 15, you can purchase the second lowest prices of the year. When flying between May 15 and June 15 or September 15 and December 12, you will enjoy paying the third lowest prices of the year.

If you can shop at least five full calendar days before departure, you improve your chance to pay a lower fare. If you can shop at least twenty one days before departing, you improve your chance even more. Most pricing contracts held by airline consolidators and air ticket brokers require five calendar days between sale and departure. Many airlines offer their own discount fares at seven, fourteen, and twenty one days advance purchase with twenty one days being lowest in price.

¶   Additional flight and travel shopping guidance is provided at the bottom of each major page at the Center. Tips posted there are relevant to the page they are on. While the major focus of shopping tips is on saving money, most of the tips will help you get the best of what you want when price is a lesser decision factor.