NOT long ago, a savvy budget-minded traveler had only to open a weekly e-mail from the airlines to see an array of discounted fares for the coming weekend. Airlines use those Web fares, as they are known, to unload unsold seats at the last minute.
Most airlines send these alerts on Tuesdays, and they have proved popular.
"They tend to sell out very early in the week," said Tim Smith, an American Airlines spokesman.
In my five years of monitoring fares, the recent pickings are the slimmest I have seen. Two weeks ago, only one Web fare was offered at American Airlines out of Los Angeles (to Denver). On United, the options are almost laughable. LAX to Oxnard anyone? Or maybe Santa Ana?
"You are in the midst of a record summer travel season, and it has reduced the number of offerings," Smith said.
US Airways isn't offering Web fares right now, although it says they are gone because of efforts to coordinate its website after its merger with America West.
"Their return is imminent," said Morgan Durrant, a US Airways spokesman.
If these summer-deal doldrums are getting you down, take heart. Three websites are offering some unique approaches to airfare bargain shopping that may help you snag those ever more elusive deals.
The sites seek to answer this age-old question: To get the best deal, do you buy now or wait? Two use technology to spot trends; another uses good old manpower to search for good deals. None is a panacea, but each adds an interesting weapon in the deal shopper's arsenal.
Airfarewatchdog.com has been around the longest. It does as its name implies: A team of experts watches over fares, and when it sees a good one, it fetches and delivers it to the website.
"We're the iconoclastic airfare listing site and the non-technical one," said George Hobica, the site's creator.
Hobica has been watching airfares for nearly eight years, first for AOL travel. He and his team of four scour the Web for fares that have suddenly gone down or are lower than their historic average.
The fares are often unadvertised and may be short lived. Hobica and his team try to book a seat to ensure availability.
I took the site for a spin and found it easy to navigate, though some pages are cluttered by advertising. The site generates revenue through advertising and relationships with travel providers that provide a small fee when a customer clicks through from the site.
