Does anyone have any tips and tricks on this??

Here, I'll share what I know, and you seasoned experts can either support, refute, or add your own ideas.

So far, the best strategy I have is to search the different booking sites like Orbitz and Priceline, etc. Even better, there are other sites that will let you search several of these discount sites with one search. The next thing I do is play around with the airports (if you're flying out of a place like NYC you can do that) and the dates to see the cheapest deal. I have found Priceline and Orbitz to be cheaper than the rest of those sites, but this may vary with your airport and destination, etc.

Usually, after running a few searches you see a pattern, or one airline that is the cheapest. Since usually these sites have markups on flights to cover the cost of operation, I then go to the site of the airline is the cheapest. In my case, I'm looking for flights from NYC to Frankfurt AM; June 3ish - July 16ish, which I thought was far enough in the future to get a good price, but I'm not really happy with nearly $1000. And actually, in this case, it turned out that Priceline's Canada Air fare was cheaper than the ones on the Canada Air site.

OK, so that's where my expertise ends...I would like some clarification on price trends. Typically, the earlier you book the flight, the cheaper it will be. The closer you get to the departure date, the more expensive the tickets get. However, I have heard that if you wait long enough eventually the price starts dropping drastically, say a couple days before the flight, as the airline tries to fill up the empty seats (if there are any! So there is that risk of it). Do you know if this is true? Or how does the price graph look against time? When is the best time to book flights? I'm kind of thinking just showing up to the airport with my stuff and asking them to put me on the next plane to Europe, wherever it goes, haha. Really not feeling like shelling out a grand.

But, please tell me, of your sneaky tactics to get a low price. I would be very interested in hearing them, as I'm sure the rest of this community would. Thanks!!