Smart travelers don’t sit in a travel agents office to plan their vacations anymore, they go to travel websites to find discount airfare deals and book their own cheap flights. At a time when major airlines are hiking up airfare for the summer rush, several low-cost carriers are offering rock-bottom prices for long haul flights. There are many websites that search not only a variety of airlines, but that also search other websites to compare airfare and find you the best price.

Your first tip to find cheap airfare is to check out several travel directories that offer price results for all the major airlines so that you can compare ticket prices at a glance. Any codeshare service, if applicable, will be display on the flights results page immediately after an airfare search.

This is because the airlines keep juggling with the prices based on the seats sold and unsold on particular date or flights. Look out for the ‘include budget airlines’ search option on price comparison travel sites. With 400 airlines to search through, Travelocity will find you the best airfare to get right to the heart of the matter.

A good place to start looking for that airfare deal is with your local travel agent. If the listed airfare is not available, different fares and/or airlines may be offered. These cities all have direct flights to either SJO (San José International) or LIR (Liberia International) or both which generally means prices are lower.

This means the lowest airfare should consider existence of special agreements between contractors and airlines or travel services offering discounted fares compared to publicly available airfares for the same travel route. Any airfares shown on this page reflect airfare recently seen and/or purchased at and were valid at time of publication.