Last-minute airfares and sales continue through Thursday

It's a week for a number of online deals for Twin Cities travelers.

For last-minute getaways this weekend, United is offering a truckload of last-minute destination roundtrip deals from Chicago ($112) to El Paso ($190) to Syracuse, NY ($214).

United is also offering additional deals for next weekend to more than a dozen more cities, ranging from $88-$434.

The usual fine print applies to these deals: Purchase by Friday and travel departs the Saturday with a return flight the following Monday or Tuesday.

Details can be found here:

http://travel.united.com/ube/efares/us/eFares.do

American Airlines is also offering a last-minute deal this weekend to Chicago for $120 as part of their NetsAAver promotion. Details here: http://www.aa.com/netsaaver/

Thursday is the final day for the $39 one-way airfare sale out of Minneapolis, at least as far as AirTran is concerned. The most recent e-mail I'm receiving is from Hotwire's Travel Ticker touting flights out of the Midwest for as low as $44 one-way.

Personally I'm not a fan of generic sale-fare claims, but feel free to check it out all the same. The link can be found here:

http://www.travel-ticker.com/savings.jsp?vert=air

But, if you go directly to AirTran, you can find specific fares listed, such as Orlando for $64-$124; Dallas for $74-$124; Philadelphia for $64 - $176 and more.

Here's the link:
http://www.airtran.com/sale/default.aspx

Tickets must be purchased by midnight Thursday and travel must be completed by Dec. 16. Sale fares are not valid for travel on Fridays or Sundays and there are some blackout dates -- basically the bookends to Thanksgiving.

That said, decent fares can be found for the flexible.

(Likewise, Southwest was touting sale fares this week through Thursday for as low as $59 one-way, though in my few searches of destinations, the lowest fare I could find was $80. Here's the link: http://travel.southwest.com/)

Elsewhere on the web, Travelzoo this week is touting sale fare prices from Minneapolis to Tampa for as low as $199, including tax, through much of November and December. Granted, it's Tampa. But it's a pretty cheap flight, relatively speaking, and just this week on Hotwire I priced December rental cars for under $30 a day.

That airfare deal can be found here:
http://www.travelzoo.com/top20/8837308-674978/

And then, of course, there are the charter deals, which are starting to heat up this week as the weather continues to drizzle.

Low price specials that I spotted this week:

Funjet Vacations' 3 nights air+hotel to the Luxor Las Vegas, for $300 a person.

http://www.funjet.com/hotdeals/detail.asp?plCode=&OAC=MSP

Otherwise, over at worryfreevacations.com, the best deals seemed to be airfare-only deals to Caribbean and Mexico, hovering in the $300 range.

http://www.worryfreevacations.com/specials/hotdeals/origin.do?originCode=MSP