Buzz

I've been using, Travelocity, Priceline, and cheaptickets.com and lately have generally been disappointed with the results when looking for CHEAP international travel rates. For instance, a few days ago I was looking for a rate from the Midwest to London, the cheapest fare shown was over $1000, round trip. Yet that very day someone in our office was saying she'd just booked a flight to London for $385 + all the taxes, etc. Of course I heard this when it was too late to find out what website she'd checked with. Does anyone know of any other web sources that we might try?

Christina

Are you sure this person booked a fare for the same time period that you wanted? Your fare is about what you can get now for peak summer season travel; $400+ is about what the fare is right now in low winter season. It's not that hard to get those rates currently-- just sign up for www.smartliving.com and they send you a newsletter every week with ALL last minute special fares for whichever airports you pick. Also, you can have Travelocity notify you of fare deals, but you said you checked them. Frankly, I rarely find lower fares on the consolidators or Cheaptickets for the routes I want, they always list the exact same fares that Travelocity and Expedia do (you should probably check both those)--I suspect this is because I am looking for fairly standard routings (ie, east coast to Paris RT) and won't change planes more than once and won't spend hours in layovers. Www.lowestfare.com is another place to check, but its name is a misnomer IMO. Some new places to try are www.qixo.com and www.bestfares.com and www.hotwire.com. Again, I got no better deals from them than from Travelocity recently (and www.itasoftware.com is in beta test but is only domestic). There is one site I know that offers better fares than the usual and purports to show whether seats are actually available, and that is www.traveldiscount.com (this uses the exact same software as www.rockbottomfares.com). My brother did buy a ticket from them to Latin America and was very satisfied, they are in California. Other sites to try are www.travelscape.com and www.onetravel.com and www.tiss.com. Just reading the newspaper alerts you to a lot of deals as airlines put major ads in the business section (usually) when they have sales (like currently Air France until end of March, USAir and United, I think). If this person is someone in your office, why can't you ask her now which site she used? I think there are too many of these sites to check now, it can really take up a lot of time, which is why it's good to try this a bit and then narrow in on the ones that actually seem useful-- you can spend forever at it and some have pretty clunky sites.

Anna

I've been searching for airfare and found the best prices at www.onetravel.com, their flight was about $200 cheaper than the same flight at the airlines website. You may also want to check www.flights.com, formerly know as tiss.

mike

I've had good luck with qixo.com (haven't booked through them, but they have some of the lowest fares I've seen), and Icelandair.com. If you live in an Iceland Air hub city (mainly northern cities: NY, Balt., DC, MSP, others) they have REALLY low fares to Europe. I just booked MSP to AMS, roundtrip, for 2 (that's right, FOR TWO/round trip) for $567 (steerage class). Do a search on this board for Iceland Air to see what others think, then keep them in mind. Mike.

BJ

Buzz, let me correct Christina's suggested website: <BR> <BR>It's: <BR> <BR>www.smarterliving.com