Sites for buying airline tickets

The best way to start your search for airline tickets is with farecast.com (which is now part of Microsoft's bing). Farecast will give you a prediction if the flight price is going to change and therefore whether you should wait before buying tickets. Check farecast often until farecast tells you to buy the ticket.

When farecast tells you that the time is right, go to kayak.com. Although you can do a flight search on farecast, nothing beats kayak's at finding the perfect flight for you. Do a kayak search, and purchase the ticket based on your preferences.

If the price still looks high and you don't need to buy the tickets right away, visit Yapta.com. While Yapta became famous for getting you a refund in case the ticket price that you already purchased went down, the site's best feature is tagging a specific flight (or several flights) that you are interested in, and then having Yapta send you an email if the flight price drops.

While purchasing tickets, you will inevitably come to the question "which seat to choose?" That's where SeatGuru comes into play. SeatGuru helps you find the best seat in the plane based on the airline and type of plane.

You are not done yet. After buying the ticket, you should make sure you have a Yapta alert on the flight you purchased (if you didn't tag the flight to begin with), as most airlines let you cancel your tickets for free for 24 hours from the moment you purchased them. Since prices can go down in this 24 hours period, Yapta can tell you if the price actually did go down, and you can then contact the airlines (if you bought it from them directly) or go online to cancel your tickets and repurchase them for the lower price.

Enjoy your flight!

Extra sites:
Now that you have your ticket, you might want to learn more about how the airline pricing system works at SoYouWanna . Also, some good travel blogs that will help you manage your airline miles and find good deals are Frugal Travel Guy , The Cranky Flier and View from the Wing. The best travel forum, of course, is FlyerTalk.

And don't forget to vote for your favorite travel site at Lynki!