Online Air Fares Go Even Lower
By Natasha Rafi

(MONEY Magazine) – Savvy travelers know you get the best fares by being flexible about your travel dates and times and by contacting air-fare consolidators. Now there's yet another tactic: Discount travel site 1travel.com (www.1travel.com) will give you an even better rate for certain flights if you book before knowing which airline you'll fly or the exact departure time.

If that sounds a little weird, there's a logical explanation: These tickets, which 1travel.com calls "white-label fares," are for seats that airlines anticipate will sit empty unless they're sold for truly rock- bottom prices. So that these tickets don't compete with regular fares, the airlines have a third party sell them anonymously. Other travel sites are likely to join 1travel.com in offering these fares.

This discount is actually a variation on Priceline's ticketing system, which also withholds flight information until you commit. But two key differences make white-label tickets more attractive. For one, you'll know, before you commit, the approximate flight time--morning, afternoon, evening or night. And there's no bidding process, so you don't have to guess how low an airline will go.

One major caveat: White-label fares aren't always available. We tried 10 random routes and found white-label fares for only two. But in one case the savings were substantial: On a flight from Philadelphia to Cancun, we found a $428 white-label fare, $138 less than the cheapest consolidator fare for that route and $425 less than a regular advance-purchase ticket.

--NATASHA RAFI