There’s no top secret about it.
I bought the yearly GoWild pass with Frontier. I can obtain last-minute flights routinely for 15 USD. But there are tons of restrictions, and it’s Frontier.
I have literally cut a first-class ticket price in half by booking by segment. Depending on the airline, you can only book it one way; some allow round trip. So for example, my flight was Mobile to Miami. When I looked it up one way as Mobile-Miami, it was Mobile-Charlotte-Miami for the itinerary and 400 dollars, but if I looked it up as a multi-city itinerary, Mobile-Charlotte then Charlotte-Miami, the price was cut in half to $250. It can work for economy too and sometimes you will get better flight times for the lower price.
That’s a perfect time to use points to avoid overpaying.
What do folks consider ‘last-minute’ now? For example, I’m going to fly somewhere around 16th December but don’t know where and want to decide somewhat on a whim based on flight prices.
It seems like I might actually be better choosing now - or is there a point with a threshold where the price is cheap and then becomes more expensive?
@Finley
Yes, but that point long passed. You’re like 6 weeks away now; it is only going to go up from here.
This hasn’t been a thing since 2019.
December 3rd is when flights go down.
Buy two one-way tickets.
Cheap last-minute deals are almost impossible. Here’s why: airlines make much more money from jacking flight prices up really high to make businessmen who need to get to an urgent meeting or people who need to take care of an urgent and unexpected family matter pay the sky-high rates they are more than willing to pay to get rid of their urgent problems compared to slashing prices to close to zero to try and get backpackers to fly anyway.
But that means that there are a few exceptions: sometimes small islands and beach destinations that almost exclusively carry tourists simply will at most have very rare business and family matters travelers. How many residents of Germany need to urgently go to beach resort destinations for business or urgent family reasons? Almost zero. The same applies to flights to the Canary Islands, particularly so the smaller ones, from Northern Europe. There you tend to see that cheap flights in the low season can become even cheaper as the day of the flight approaches.
The odds of a German businessman or a family member needing to rush to Fuerteventura, a small Spanish island with a population of 116,000 (including tourists) that can have 5 million visitors per year, is practically zero. And so tickets on fairly empty flights in the low season can get cheaper and cheaper as the date of the flight approaches, especially in the low season.
Then there are also routes within countries to distant locations that are heavily subsidized by the national governments. Such as between mainland Spain and the Canary Islands, the Azores islands and mainland Portugal and I’m sure there are others. Sometimes the governments that hugely subsidize these routes (at least for residents) informally tell the airlines that ‘it looks very bad’ if they gouge customers while the government keeps them profitable, and they ‘get the hint.’
So it’s not impossible, but really quite rare.
If not in Europe, go to Europe. Once in Europe, go to an airport and look at the specials offered by the super discount airlines. Copenhagen-Athens 19 Euros. Barcelona-London 29 Euros. I once saw Bratislava-London (the entire width of Europe) for £1.99 (3 US dollars). Which destinations have empty seats that day will vary (so pack both a swimsuit and a parka), but there are typically great deals to be had to somewhere (clearly, the OP doesn’t care where they go, or they’d have posted their origin and destination if they wanted usable advice).
But in the US? Flights get more expensive as departure time draws near. So purchase any possible trip far in advance and have enough status with the airline that all fares are fully refundable.
Sometimes, you can find last-minute award travel for not many frequent-flyer miles - the logic being that business travelers won’t use their own miles for a business trip, while discretionary travelers might opt for a last-minute trip - my family has done that a few times.
There are some really good cheap top-secret last-minute deals from Minsk, Belarus to Chișinău, Moldova.
Hope this helps!
Clancy said:
There are some really good cheap top-secret last-minute deals from Minsk, Belarus to Chișinău, Moldova.
Hope this helps!
Wow 
Unless you get with a travel club.
Booking with points is the best way to grab last-minute flights for regular price, even slightly discounted, as opposed to the high price you pay with money for last minute.
However, if you are asking this question, I imagine you don’t have nearly the amount of points needed to buy. Building a stash of miles takes months/years.