Yapta helped me get cheaper flights

A few weeks ago, I wrote about a free service called Yapta, which stands for "Your Amazing Personal Travel Assistant" (get Yapta now, or read my previous post about Yapta). Shortly after I started using Yapta, I bought a couple of plane tickets for a family trip and used it to watch the fares to see if they dropped. My tickets were about $760 each when I paid for them (yep, I know - pricey).

What does Yapta do?

The way Yapta works is that you can tell it what trips you're shopping for, or which tickets you've already bought. From there, Yapta starts monitoring the prices and lets you know when they drop (you can set how far they need to drop before you're notified). If the price drops, most airlines will either give you a refund or issue a travel voucher (depending on their policy) if you contact them before the price goes back up again (you've gotta act fast - those fares change quickly).

Yapta can track fares from the following airlines (currently US-heavy), but they have been adding more to the list:

• AirTran Airways
• Alaska Airlines
• American Airlines
• ATA Airlines
• Continental
• Delta Airlines
• Frontier Airlines
• JetBlue
• Midwest Airlines
• Ted Airlines
• United Airlines
• US Airways

Well, did Yapta work?

About a week ago, I got an email from Yapta on my Blackberry saying the fare had dropped, and I was elegible for a voucher from United Airlines for the difference. They even told me where to call and what to say to get my voucher (pretty cool). I called United, and the price had dropped to $601 per ticket so I got vouchers in the amount of $308.

Now that is what I call an amazing personal travel assistant. It's free - what are you waiting for?