Gotta get out of this NY cold this weekend! Tried Miami but flights are too much! Any other ideas

Gotta get out of this NY cold this weekend! Tried Miami but flights are too much! Any other ideas?
I had my mind set on Miami. I am traveling from Rochester NY. Feb 25 - Feb 27. Tickets to Miami are $800 a person round trip I am guessing because of spring break and because I am booking within one week. Any other ideas? I've considered driving to Virginia Beach or something but it's not that warm there yet. Does anybody know any good sites with cheap last minute flight deals?
Air Travel - 4 Answers
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1 :
expedia?
2 :
Tickets are expensive also because you are booking for travel within 14 days. Ticket prices go up a lot if you don't buy at least 14 days in advance. You can see if JetBlue has anything to Ft. Lauderdale or go to http://www.priceline.com and use the name Your Price feature.
3 :
Last minute airfare is not discounted. You can check Spirit Airlines, they have $59 each way to FLL from Newark and Atlantic City right now, but Friday to Sunday is usually not discounted. As a former airline agent, I highly suggest staying away from websites like Priceline, Cheap....anything.com and Hotwire for airfare, and any other website that does not give you the airline's name before booking. These fares are the most restricted and an airline cannot touch these tickets for any reason if you have to rebook, and if by some chance you miss your flight, the airline cannot touch your reservation and you are out the money you paid and have no recourse of action. Try other airports that are in your vicinity, and alternate airports where you want to go. For FLL look at MIA (Miami) or PBI (West Palm Beach). Your fare has nothing to do with Spring Break, it's because you are booking last minute, and Spring Break doesn't start until next month as far as industry wide travel rates. Look at www.fly.com, sometimes you can find fares that are not published on there, and www.matrix.itasoftware.com this is the program that the travel sites use to search for fares. You can't book through the website itself but it will tell you where to go to book and what schedule to look for, and you can search a month's worth of rates. But I recommend booking directly with the airline, it's always safer. However, if you are going to use a 3rd party site, the safest are Orbitz, Travelocity and Expedia. But be aware that travel sites can not discount tickets anymore than the airlines lowest published available fare. One source my sell out of the tier faster than another, since they buy the fares in bulk as they are released. Try booking 30days or more in advance if you can. Fares are broken down to 7 day, 14 day and 30 days or more advance purchase. The closer to the departure date you are, the more the fare goes up.
4 :
if you use kayak.com it can find the cheapest flights and also you can compare them to the prices on expedia, priceline, etc.