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Yes, Southwest Airlines is having a huge sale on plane tickets. Several round-trip tickets will cost only $50, $75 or $100 if you purchase tickets today through the end of the day Thursday. You can even get one-way tickets for as low as $25.

But wait! Before you head to Southwest Airlines web site to get a ticket, take heed: Blackout dates on these fares are Dec. 17 through Jan. 4. So if you’re looking to get tickets for Christmas, Channukah or New Year’s, you’re out of luck. I was really excited to see the Southwest Airlines sale prices because I wanted to fly somewhere for New Year’s, but then I was sorely disappointed.

Marketing strategy

Of course, Southwest Airlines decided to have this three-day sale during a time when a lot of people will already be looking for airline tickets. Being able to get a plane ticket for less than the minimum borrowing amount for most paydayloans is enticing, even if it’s for a different time period than what the person is looking for.

Because a lot of people are already looking for plane tickets, a lot more eyes will fall on the cheap airfare Southwest Airlines is offering. Of course, they’ll be disappointed, just like I was. However, the idea of getting to fly somewhere for $50 will no doubt have people inventing reasons to go, just as the web site suggests you should.

Still time to plan

The super cheap airfare applies to dates between Dec. 2 and Dec. 16. After the holidays are all over, you can get tickets for the sale prices for Jan. 5 through Feb. 10. So, though buyers have plenty of time to plan the agenda for their trips, they don’t have much time to decide where to go. Southwest Airlines stresses on the Fourth Quarter Sale page that these prices are available for 72 hours only.

January is a notoriously dead month for traveling, as people often like to stick close to home following all of the holiday hubub. However, people who live in snowy, icy climates and would like a little mid-winter sunshine should view this as a great opportunity.

Are you thinking it's travel time?

AirfareWatchdog.com is a helpful tool for finding the best price on airplane tickets  if you’re looking to book a specific flight. However, if you just need to get out of town and want to know the cheapest place to go, AirfareWatchdog is the perfect tool.

Also, if you want to book a flight in the near future, AirfareWatchdog can alert you when prices drop on tickets you’re looking for.

Getting to know AirfareWatchdog

There are plenty of travel sites out there that scour airline web sites for you to find the cheapest airfare. AirfareWatchdog serves all of the same functions as well-known travel sites — such as CheapAir, Expedia, Travelocity, etc. — but takes it a step further. In fact, AirfareWatchdog searches all of the search sites as well as the airlines’ sites and finds the cheapest airfares they are offering.

There are new tools popping up every day that help you find what you’re looking for online, whether its designer shoes, cheap loans or a trip to Ireland. You can use AirfareWatchdog the same way you use regular travel sites, by looking up a flight and locating the cheapest ticket. Or, you can use AirfareWatchdog to simply find the cheapest trip you can go on.

Not a flight-booking site

You don’t book your flight directly through AirfareWatchdog, but it does link you to sites where you can book them. After you find the flight and price you want, you can proceed with booking it the same way you’d do it on other web sites.

There is, however, on feature I’ve only found at AirfareWatchdog, and I consider it the sties best feature.

E-mail alerts

If you are planning a trip that’s a few weeks (or months) away, head to AirfareWatchdog right now. You can sign up for e-mail alerts that will let you know when a price changes for airfare between two cities.

Nowadays, airlines are scrambling for customers, and that has resulted in many slashed airfare deals. However, these deals can sometimes be unpredictable or short-lived. That’s where AirfareWatchdog’s e-mail alerts come in. If there’s a certain city you want to fly to, sign up to get e-mail alerts any time tickets to that city go on sale, and you’ll be the first to know.

Travel season

For students who are out of school for the summer or workers who’ve saved up their vacation time to take advantage of better weather, AirfareWatchdog can help you make the most of your time off by getting you cheaper tickets. That way, you’ll have more cash to spend on souveniers, great local cuisine at the places you visit or other activities.

Make sure to check out the helpful links directly on the front page of AirfareWatchdog, including Top 50 Fares and Fare of the Day. If you run your own web site and are seeking ways to generate traffic, check out the Free Fares Widget. No, the fares are not free. The widget is free.

RyanAir, based in the U.K., also offers low airfare.

Reading about Jet America’s $9 plane tickets, which you can purchase through jetamerica.com, reminds me of the time a telemarketer offered me a product that was “completely free.” After reassuring me about a dozen times of its complete freeness, she asked for my credit card number to pay for the shipping and handling charge. Click.

See, the actual ticket from Jet America Airlines is $9, but your trip will cost a lot more than that. However, for the time being it seems that these $9 price tags are doing exactly what Jet America set out to do: get attention.

Limited service

Jet America Airlines opens for business today, and  its promotional kickoff special is $9 airfare. This brings us to catch No. 1: The $9 tickets can only get you between Newark, N.J.’s Liberty Airport and one of these four cities: Toledo, Ohio; South Bend, Ind.; Lansing, Mich.; and Melbourne-Vero Beach, Fla.

Catch No. 2 is that there are a limited number of these tickets available. Only nine seats on each flight will go for $9, and there’s no telling how long this offer will last.

The real cost

Catch No. 3 is that you may be left scrambling for instant cash loans to pay for all of the extra fees that Jet America will tack on to your $9 ticket. For instance, ordering the ticket will cost more than the ticket itself, no matter how you do it.

To buy a ticket through jetamerica.com will cost $10. If you order by phone, it costs $20. Tampabay.com also says that “Jet America will charge an additional $20 for a round-trip with an assigned seat.” It’s not clear to me whether you can choose if you have an assigned seat or not.

Other predictable fees, such as baggage check fees, will also be tacked on along the way.

A good price, but not a $9 price

Really, even with the extra fees the trips are still a great price. Say you order a $9 ticket at jetamerica.com for $10, that’s only $19. If the assigned seat fee is added automatically, that’s $39. If you have carry-on only and don’t require an in-flight beverage, all you need to add is sales tax. So, let’s say it’s $43 one way; that’s only $86 round-trip.

I never pay much attention to the other added processing fees that are tacked on when I order a plane ticket online, but let’s assume those are there. You’re still looking at a round-trip ticket for about $100, which is a really great price. But, it’s not unheard of. And it’s certainly not $9.

Deja Vu

If  you feel like you heard of a formula similar to Jet America’s before, it’s probably because you have. USA Today says:

It’s a marketing approach used by Skybus, a Columbus, Ohio-based carrier that operated for about 10 months until weak revenue and high oil prices forced it out of business in April 2008. Skybus offered some seats for $10 until it went bankrupt.

The similarity is not a coincidence. JetAmerica founder and CEO John Weikle also was Skybus’ founder, though he left the management of that company shortly after it launched in May 2007.

Jet America’s planes will begin taking flight July 13.

SideStep won't make your airplane food taste better, but it sure makes getting the ticket easier.

I have been on a lot of ticket searching sites. I mean, how many are out there now? Cheap Tickets, Expedia, Airfare Watchdog, Orbitz, Travelocity … you get the point. But, I think I have found my favorite: SideStep.

SideStep is perfect for someone who wants the process to be as quick, painless and cheap as possible. I have never found a well-priced flight so quickly.

No frills

If you just want to see when the cheapest flights for this month are — and quickly — this is the best route. I thought I was going to have to use my credit card or take out personal loans to fund an upcoming trip, but I found an affordable ticket in no time on SideStep.

You simply plug in your departure and destination city, and voila, a calendar pops up. It shows all of the cheap flights for the next month. Click on the price listed the date you want to leave, and it’ll show you the ticket details.

Could you be more specific?

SideStep lets you specify whether you want a round trip, one-way, multi-city or weekend trips. When I plugged in two cities the flights that popped up were on weekends anyway. Then it showed me the ticket price for a roundtrip if I wanted to stay one day or two days. (It was the same price.)

Granted, if you want to travel on a day when a low airfare is not offered, this site could be frustrating.  But in my opinion, it should be every traveler’s first line of defense before combing through a million flight times and airlines to find the cheapest route.

How SideStep works

The SideStep homepage, which is actually a form asking your departure and destination cities right from the get-go, explains:

We search over 200 travel websites to bring you the very best travel values on the web.

For searching 200 databases, this thing sure works fast. But if you don’t believe it, you can compare SideStep’s prices to Airfare.com, Hotwire, Priceline, Expedia and Travelocity with the click of your mouse.

OK, a few frills

For travelers who want to search for hotels and rental cars along with their plane tickets, that’s an option, too. However, you have to chose one of the other five travel web sites and it will re-route you but display the results anyway.

Now, that’s what I call teamwork. If I gave out web site awards, I’d give SideStep the “Easiest Web Site to Use Ever” award.