Issue time 2:44 pm, by CTreit
Category:Bargain Shopping
How to find cheap airline tickets
June 10th, 2010Booking airline tickets can be a very frustrating experience. There are so many different pricing strategies among airlines that you never quite know how much the trip actually costs you until you read through a lot of fine print. Some airlines charge you extra for baggage, others charge for carry-on items. How then do you get the best price? Ho can you save money when you book tickets?
For a start, open up multiple browser windows so that you can compare the final cost among different airlines on different websites. When we’re searching for tickets for the family, my wife and I each do searches (at the same time) on our own computers, opening up multiple windows and comparing notes as we find different fares. This doubles our efforts, but it usually leads to good results since we employ slightly different search methods. There is one thing that I don’t get though. Even when we are searching on the same site at just about the same time, sometimes I can find a cheaper flight than my wife. This happened to us just yesterday!
Aside from an airline’s own website, you can use other sites which show you fares for many different airlines on one page. Many scan through a lot of airlines to find you the cheaper route from one place to another. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t check directly an airline’s own site. One good reason is this: some budget airlines like airtran.com or jetblue.com don’t offer their flights through all the big discounters, but they still have great prices!
1. orbitz.com is the grand-daddy of booking sites, but I have found that it has not been able to give me good rates recently. I booked my last flight on orbitz.com about two years ago. I still visit the site regularly out of habit, but also to get an idea about the general price level of a ticket.
2. cheapoair.com works similar to orbitz.com. Yesterday was the first time that I used the site and it worked out well. It was here that I found the cheapest fare of my and my wife’s comparative search. It was offered by an airline that I didn’t even expect would fly the route I was looking for! cheaptickets.com, and vayama.com are another of the same kind of site. I always use it when I search for flights.
3. lowfare.com allows you to search some of the sites I mentioned above and others as well, simultaneously. You enter your travel plans and lowfare.com uses the data to search other jumbo airfare search sites like kayak.com, sidestep.com, and travelocity.com. Lowfare.com opens up additional browser windows for each one of the sites you want to access.
4. Lastly, I regularly check expedia.com, hotwire.com (a site I think is great for last minute hotel bookings and car rental reservations), and priceline.com.
Keep in mind that you can also use these sites to find low prices for hotels, car rentals, things-to-do, airport parking, airport transfers etc.
My wife and I searched yesterday for about half an hour to find a ticket that was $150 cheaper than the next cheapest ticket in the search. I’d say that the time we spent searching for tickets was well worth the effort. It usually is.
What strategies do you employ to book your travel? What experiences do you have with these travel sites?
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