With gas prices soaring, a family vacation is increasingly becoming more expensive. While sites such as Travelocity.com and Expedia.com are helpful in finding cheaper airfares, hotels and packages, some Web sites offer even steeper discounts. One of the sites that always seems to be running ridiculously cheap airfare specials is SpiritAir.com. Specials change frequently (yesterday they were offering a special for $2 flights, today the special is $24 off flights and tomorrow it will be something else entirely), but I’ve seen prices drop as low as a penny each way. The number of seats available at these discounted prices is limited, but if you are somewhat flexible with your dates (and live near an airport where Spirit flies) you can likely find a flight to/from Orlando (or neighboring Tampa, Fort Myers or even Fort Lauderdale) at a steal.

There’s no catch. My parents have utilized this discount to fly from Detroit to Orlando (and back) several times. Once they paid 16 cents roundtrip, and another time they paid $8 for one leg and regular price (still less than $100) for the other leg of the trip. Of course they did still have to pay taxes, which added up to more than they paid for the flight itself, but taxes are required of any flight.

The only added expense with flying a discount carrier like Spirit is that they do charge you to check baggage. It’s not a large cost ($10 per bag for the first two bags, or $5 per bag if you purchase checked baggage ahead of time on their Web site), but it is something to consider. Still, you can’t beat a flight that costs pennies!

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