Holy cow, Jdarg, I bet your blood ran cold when you answered the phone.
Empty planes are so rare these days, but maybe different routes had different rates of success, dunno.
If you at least vaguely know your route and are familiar with the airline you typically use, just being on their newsletter list is very helpful.
I agree with Shaken that not all airlines are on all the search engines; Southwest is not on Travelocity.
Orbitz was put together by a few of the major airlines, and you will not find all airlines represented on it. That's why I use the several engines I mentioned before, especially ITA. You can't book on ITA but it is thorough, and now that Travelocity no longer searches transatlantic flights, ITA is the best for that.
(Expedia is not as thorough--but I've had occasional success with it, esp for flights within Europe.)
I just learned about Farecompare recently, but the person who told me about it said that every time she tried to book a good fare, there were no seats to be had. (Sometimes this happens with Travelocity, too.) I like the little chart that Farecompare shows you, though.
Of course, if you are
really desperate, there are Priceline and Hotwire. I only used Priceline once, when a funeral suddenly came up; everything was fine.
But you can end up with some strange routing.
If you really want to get obssessively into airfare/flight discussion and/or you are looking specifically for a cheap fare, there is
Flyertalk
and
Travel Air
I just went cold - the Comair crash was a little close to us and still a little fresh (and I knew 2 people on it- through old business, not friends, but still weird).
