wally34949

When I book a flight, I like to start with www.expedia.com because of the multiple destination option. It's also quick. I can make changes quickly. I can press enter instead of arrowing down to press search.

www.orbitz.com is good for domestic flights but not for international flights as they have higher prices or don't list some of the European carriers.

www.travelocity.com is good but I find it slower than expedia and you have to type in 2005--not 05 or it comes up an error. Like I want to book a flight in the year 05.

Once I find the flight I like, I go to the web site of the airline and book it there. Continental and most other airlines will give a Bonus 1,000 miles for doing so.

Does anyone have any other suggestions. I'd like to hear them.

(Please note that I said something good about Continental and didn't say anthing about "You know what&quot

jlm_mi

Many airlines don't work with expedia, travelocity or orbitz, so it pays to look at their web sites directly as well. I know Southwest is one. I'm not sure, but I'd guess that's also true about JetBlue, Frontier, Ted, etc.

And sometimes you can find a flight on one of the "big 3" that is considerably cheaper than going directly through the airline. I recently purchased a flight on Independence Air from Travelocity for $143. The same flight would have been $185 directly from Independence. I don't know why, but I bought from Travelocity.

wally34949

I agree! I saw on expedia prices with American Airlines. But when I went to their site, only the early morning flight was that price and the rest were higher.

I forgot to mention that I also have www.sidestep.com on my computer. It comes up automatically and checks other airlines. This is helpful on International flights when more than one airline is involved.

Gardyloo

The best search - but not booking - engine I know of is www.itasoftware.com. It will show you all carriers serving given routes, has a powerful "radius" feature (i.e. any airport within 50/100/200 miles), and when you select flights you can pull up the fare class too. To make a booking, you need to go online to the airline's website or phone service, but with the fare code in hand you can usually get the same deal you see on the ITA screens. ITA doesn't cover too many low-cost-carriers (easyJet et al) but it's a great way to scan pricing alternatives. If you learn the "ITA search syntax" you can get very specific - airline choices, routings, specific fare classes, etc. Very powerful machine. Orbitz uses ITA as its underlying engine BTW - but only a little bitty piece of it.

zpenci

Lately I have been using www.kayak.com. It searches the travel websites (e.g. Orbitz) as well as individual airline websites, including discount airlines like Jetblue and Independence Air.

wally34949

Great ideas. I had not heard of those two. One more question, I once booked a flight on www.expedia.com. The flight was Airtran up and Delta back. After I booked it, I discovered because it was two different airlines, I needed a paper ticket. By the time I added the shipping charge and the paper ticket cost, it wasn't the cheapest ticket. Does anyone know when you must have a paper ticket? Also, a few years ago, I flew into one city in Europe and returned from another city, and I had to have a paper ticket.

rkkwan

Most US airlines' flight are searcheable by itasoftware.com or kayak.com. The exception is Southwest, which doesn't post its fares anywhere other than its own website. So make sure you check that.

wally34949 - When you ititnerary has two unaffiliated carriers, then it's almost certain a paper ticket is required. I recently had a trip like this, on Continental and Cathay Pacific. There are now gradually more interline eticket possibilities, especially between close partners, but whether that's possible is often unclear to the customers until when you try actually to book it.

wally34949

Thanks for the information. I appreciate it and I hope you appreciate that fact that I put a "cork in my wine."

zpenci

Wally -- here is a recent article from the New York Times about the battle between electronic and paper tickets:

http://tech2.nytimes.com/mem/technol...50C0A9639C8B63