What I learned from surfing airline ticket sites
The family is trying to get to Europe this summer. To that end I've spent time shopping for airplane tickets on the Web. The conclusion so far? Yikes! All the time in the world on Orbitz etc. won't keep the trip from costing at least $1,000 per person round trip from Dulles to Paris, thanks to huge surcharges for expensive jet fuel.
Orbitz, Travelocity, Expedia, Kayak and Airfare.com all seem pretty much the same in terms of which companies they search and which flights they flag as the best deals. I liked Kayak's interface the best. At a click it shows the best fares to your destination available on each major airline as well as the best fares for various route configuations: nonstop, one stop etc. On some sites -- FareCompare and Airfare.com, for example -- you don't immediately see the full cost of the ticket and all the surcharges. All the sites give the full bill before you pay, however.
Priceline, another ticket search engine, also lets you bid on tickets. I threw in a few lowball offers -- $750, $850 -- to see what would happen. They got rejected, but the Priceline computer then sent an offer for $1,050 British Airways flight that everybody else listed.
Fare aggregators don't offer newer, discount airlines. One option for transatlantic travelers is to fly a major carrier to London or Dublin and then fly a discount Euro carrier -- Ryanair or EasyJet -- to the ultimate destination. The combined cost may be less than the expense to take the major carrier all the way. However, the hassles probably outweigh the few hundred dollars you might save. Discount carriers use secondary airports far from city centers, and you have to claim your bags and recheck them in London or Dublin.
Comments
I've found the easiest to use site the ITA Matrix.
http://matrix.itasoftware.com/cvg/dispatch/
Click "Login is as guest" when you get there.
This site easily lets you search for ranges (ie, I want to go for a week in July, and I want to go for the cheapest one), pick your flights based on arrival/departure/layover times and quickly compare prices between airlines (for those of us who will pay $25 more for the frequent flyer miles, this is a big bonus). You can also compare prices between airports within a mileage range; it's often cheaper to/from fly to an airport 90 miles away and slightly rearrange your trip. This way you can include departures from Baltimore, Washington and Philly in the same search.
Posted by: Mitch | April 4, 2008 2:27 PM
One last note about the ITA Matrix: you can't actually book your fare on that site. You have to go directly through the airline.
I would also recommend downloading the Yapta software and tagging your preferred routes. As soon as we identify our vacation plans, we tag the routes we want and wait for the prices to drop. Yapta checks the prices daily for us and sends us an email when the price changes.
Posted by: Mitch | April 4, 2008 2:29 PM
The websites are actually as bad as the airlines themselves. Too often you go to another website to find a competitive price and get the same price back. What alot of us don't realize is that many of the discount websites are owned and operated by the same company. Let's be clear, most of the travel websites are "in bed" with the airlines.
Unfortunately, when passengers demand more from the airlines, the airlines think of cost cutting measures. Very few of them are differentiating their "product" which is a basic principle of sound business.
Sooner or later, some airline genius will actually stop thinking in the industry vaccuum and say..."we can do this better, the model is not working:
Posted by: g | July 7, 2009 2:36 PM