Frequent Flier Guide: HowTo Fly Super Cheap This Summer

Trusty LifeHacker brings us another helpful HowTo, but this time it's in the travel department.

"Get ready to arm yourself with your web browser and a handful of the best travel sites. In this guide, I'll lay out the basics of buying airline tickets, highlight some fancy tools to help you find the right time to buy, help you set up a few passive tools for making the best deals come to your doorstep, and in general highlight how I regularly go about finding great deals on airfare. (I fly roughly once a month, and using these strategies have secured tickets so inexpensive all I had to do was pay the tax on what the price of the ticket would have been.)"

LifeHacker's Erica Ho covers:

• Learn the Basics of Buying Airfare
• Use Graphs To Your Advantage
• Set Up Instant Email Notifications
• Plot Your Route Manually
• Skip the Major Airlines, Fly Budget
• Use Twitter For Last-Minute Steals
• Airline Fees Undermine the Bottom-Line Cost
• After You've Bought Your Ticket, Track Your Ticket for a Refund

Click through for Erica Ho's The Frequent Flier's Guide to Finding Cheap Airfare.