At this point I like to do a couple things just to insure that I have caught every option I have.

First is to check the individual sites for sepcific airlines. Jet Blue doesn't come up on all the searches and have incredible deals sometimes so I will usually check them. I will also check Southwest because they don't allow other sites to book their flights. I also have preferred status with Continental and United so I check those as well. This step just depends on your personal preferences.

If I haven't booked my hotel, and wont be using points, I will definitely go into a couple reservation sites such as Expedia or Hotels.com and do a search for Package Deals. You can knock quite a bit off your bill by doing this. That is a whole other Oprah though so if that's an option, go to our Package Deals site to search for those.

The next thing I will do is go into one of the other scanners, I prefer Trip Mama just because I think it is very easy and straight forward, but you can go to any of them. Booking Buddy, Side Step, or any of the dozens of sites similar will all do the same thing. Once you input your destination and dates, you can click on any number of sites out there and it will open a window for each searching for your flight options without having to reinput your search options. The point of this though is to be a quick option for searching other sites and that is how I use it. I very quickly scan each one of the sites to see if anything pops out as being different than what I have seen. If nothing catches my eye on one site, I close it and move on to the next. You can seriously search half a dozen sites in just a few minutes. (unless you do find a great deal, then that one might take longer)

If I have time and am wiling risk the price I have found in hopes that a good deal will come along I will go into Yapta or Fare Compare and set them up to alert me if the price drops. The difference between the two alerts is that Yapta will alert you if a specific flight you have chosen goes down. Fare Compare will alert you to better prices on flights for the day and destination you are traveling.

There are other sites out there that say they will alert you to good deals but from my experience, they just bombard you with useless emails for deals that will rarely apply to you.

If you already have a flight that you are happy with this can be a big risk. The flight may fill up, the cost could go up or you could end up in one those dreaded middle seats. If you are willing to take the chance, check out our Predicting the Future page for some good tips on weighing your odds.

If after all this, you still haven't found the flight or price you are looking for there are some extreme measures you can take to try and find it, but for most people they wont be willing to do it. If you want to see them, go over to our Extreme Flight Search page.

Hopefully though, you will have found your flight. If not, weight a couple days and do the searches again. Making fllight reservations is a constantly moving dart board and change very quickly.