The main idea that stretches across the vast majority of articles and tip collections dedicated to cheap air tickets can be boiled down to "shopping around". It's true that comparison shopping is one of the best ways to buy virtually anything for a much more competitive price, especially in a market with high supply and fierce competition. The market of air flights, especially the budget segment can certainly be characterized as such, although the economic recession has taken its toll and left us with much fewer air companies to choose from. However, shopping for cheap air tickets can be rather difficult at times, making insurance comparison shopping feel like a walk in the park. And what's really unpleasant about the whole situation is that the air companies are the ones to blame for such a state of affairs.

Why it gets so hard?

The air ticket industry is probably the only one where the customer may be clueless about the final price of the service even when registering for the flight at the airport. This is primarily due to the price fragmentation exercised by air companies, when instead of a single price for the service render you get an entire bulk of smaller prices for separate services that "make up" the final amount payable. You usually get a base price, which gets indicated in all the air ticket aggregators, which account for more than a half of all the air tickets sold in the US. Most customers shop around for air tickets namely by these base prices, forgetting that there's a multitude of additional fees waiting for them just around the corner, which can sometimes push the overall price of the ticket twice as high as the base rate and even beyond that. To make it even more confusing, each air company tends to name all these additional fees in a different way, thus making it difficult to standardize them and include these fees to the overall price comparison. More fees are being added on a yearly basis, with things like early boarding, preferred flight seats or even additional beverages with your meal each adding up to the final price of the ticket. No wonder that it often gets confusing and shopping for cheap air tickets becomes such a pain in the neck.

Why the air companies are doing this?

The answer to this question is apparent: to make you pay more money. In the light of the current economic situation, which has literally become the number one excuse for all sorts of dirty business practices, air companies are fighting for survival with all means necessary. Seeing so many air companies going bankrupt or taken over by larger players, it's easy to imagine how desperate some surviving operators can become when it comes to earning money. So they will use all kinds of unethical practices and introduce various hidden costs to make the travellers pay more and compensate for the ever increasing fuel prices and dropping numbers of travellers. It's easy to see how such practices, in fact, damage the entire industry and make the travelers choose other means of transportation when possible. But it doesn't seem that things will change anytime soon.

Is there any way around?

Unfortunately, it's rather unlikely that the air companies will make comparison shopping for tickets any easier, at least in the short run. Since the industry is not regulated and there are no real initiatives on standardizing the prices, the price fragmentation and abundance of hidden costs will surely prevail in this market. This means just one thing: you should always double and triple check the conditions and additional fees when shopping around for cheap air tickets and try to get as much information as possible before making the payment. Of course, this will make the process even more tedious and time-consuming, but it may save you a lot of money in return.