For many air travelers,the key to flying on the cheap comes from being flexible. So they're willing to travel during theoff season, choose mid-week departures, accept long layovers in stride,and sacrifice perks such as assigned seating, in-flight meals, and checkedluggage in return for ultra-low fares. While all of these are great ways to getaround with limited resources, those who just want to travel -- and don’t mindwhere they go or when they get there -- have another excellent resource at theirdisposal: the error fare. Error fares are shockingly low fares that emerge bymistake, and if savvy travelers catch them on time, they can save a smallfortune on international travel.

Mistakes Happen

Courtesy of Masakatsu Ukon, Flickr

“An error fare is exactly what it says on the tin — an error,” says Vitaliy Malanich, an editor at Fly4free, which

specializes in finding cheap fares across the web. “It’s a price that was not intended by the carrier or travel agency issuing the ticket and

it’s incredibly low compared to the usual price for that route or

compared to other airlines flying to similar destinations.”

According to Mauro L. Matarazzo, CFO of Cheap

Flights Lab, an online clearinghouse of inexpensive fares, error fares are

usually the result of human error, though programming mistakes are also often

to blame. Error fares are “usually due to a wrong insertion of a value or an

oversight, a wrong exchange value of a currency, or a forgotten digit.”

That’s

right, sometimes that omitted extra “0” can turn a pricey fare into a downright

steal.

“Over the last few

years, we’ve seen error fares with crazy prices for various destinations. Japan or Brazil from Europe for

€157, Malaysia from Italy for €124, Thailand for €126, or from USA to

Europe for $197 — round trip and all taxes included,” says Fly4Free Editor/Product Manager Marta Przystolik. “Those are examples from just a couple of last

months’ prices that people often wouldn’t even dream of.”

Finding Fares

Courtesy of Masahiko OHKUBO, Flickr

While using sites such as Fly4free and Cheap

Flights Lab are the easiest way to find error fares, there are plenty of other

options for dedicated sleuths willing to take the hunt into their own hands,

particularly if they are only interested in flights out of their home cities.

Doing exhaustive searches using flexible search criteria or calendar views

(that allow you to look at a whole month at a time) may help you discover an error fare for a flight leaving your city. It also helps to get an in with online travel

and aviation communities, such as FlightAware and SecretFlying. Even searching

Twitter and Facebook for hashtags such as #mistakefares and #errorfares can

turn up some incredible results.

Just be sure to book

quickly. Chances are that if you’ve found out about an error fare, so has the

airline in question, and unless they are trying to get some serious media

attention or fill up seats fast, they will probably fix the error immediately.

Remember to Play by the Rules

Don’t forget the

number-one rule of the error fare club: you don’t talk about error fares, at

least not to the airlines themselves “…airlines and travel agencies do have a clause in their Terms & Conditions covering error fares, allowing them to cancel such tickets,” Przystolik explains. “That’s why the most important rule concerning

error fares is: ‘Never contact the agency or airline about it’. Just don’t. You’re risking

a cancellation not only for yourself, but for everyone else who booked and is

hoping to fly it.”

Related Links:

10 Super Cheap New Flight Routes You Need to Know About5 Facts About Budget Airlines You Should Know 11 Things You Need to Know Before Your Flight is Canceled