Who’s up for the Biltmore?

Or, for that matter, Niagara Falls?

Flights to both destinations — Greenville, South Carolina (just south of Asheville, NC), and Buffalo, NY — are among the last-minute deals being offered this week out of MSP on United Airlines.

Flights to Greenville are going for $236 roundtrip, departing this Saturday and returning on Monday or Tuesday. Flights to Buffalo depart next weekend with returns the following Monday or Tuesday for $220 roundtrip.

Both fares are part of a larger last-minute sale that many airlines tend to feature on the Wednesday of each week (hence this posting), though our hometown airline of Northwest (soon-to-be-Delta) rarely seems to offer these much any more.

These last-minute fares, however, all tend to share many of the same characteristics, as many seasoned last-minute-travelers know. Characteristics such as that tickets must be purchased by midnight of the Friday the fares are announced, and that travelers must depart that Saturday with a following Monday or Tuesday return.

Personally these have always been my favorite kind of fares, just because they can be so random and they don’t come with the lodging strings attached.

So if you’re willing to fly by the seat of your pants (so to speak), you can often go visit friends in distant lands on the spur of the moment.

Here are some other fares available this weekend and next from United:

Bloomington, Ill - $150
Springfield, Ill - $150
Syracuse, NY - $230-$240
Burlington, Vt. - $248
Portland, Maine - $266
Ottawa, Ontario - $330

The full list can be found here:
http://travel.united.com/ube/efares/us/eFares.do

These, of course, aren’t the only fare sales.

Whenever I check the weekly sale fares, I always include a quick stop at Worry Free Vacations, at http://www.worryfreevacations.com/

I click on the site’s scroll-down menu of “Red Hot Deals” to see if there are any last-minute tickets available there as well.

This week, for example, you can find roundtrip flights to Cancun for as low as $119, and tickets to Puerto Vallarta for $190.

Other sales this week include:

Airtran is running their summer fare sale beginning this week. Among the dozen or more notorious one-way “sample fares” …

Fort Myers - $109
New Orleans - $119
San Antonio - $89
San Juan, Puerto Rico - $129

Check out the fare sale at http://www.airtran.com

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 28th, 2008 at 4:28 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.