Hello, this is my first time to this forum and posting here. My question is in regards to buying an airline ticket online. For anyone who has purchased an airline ticket on the internet in the past...do you recommend it? What site do you recommend or which have you had any experiences with? Any info is greatly appreciated. thanks!

I've bought tickets online numerous times from Southwest and have never had any problems. It's extremely convenient, and every week they have internet specials. I'd highly recommend it. Another alternative to buying directly through an airline would be to go to a site such as priceline.com. I personally haven't used their service, so I don't know how reliable they are or what kind of rates you can get. You might try posting on the U.S. travel forum if you haven't already. You might get more of a response. Good luck.

Lina, I have used on-line service many times and in different ways, e.g., individual airline websites, priceline and travelocity, etc. Two points I wish to make: (1) Electronic ticketing is great, more convenient -- one goes right to the gate, shows a form of identification and that's it; however, there is one draw back -- in case of a strike, airlines do not accept electronic tickets from other airlines. and (2) Priceline.com is fine, one can name their price within the parameters that they are willing to accept, but one must be quite flexible. What the rules say is what they are! If one is willing to go by the rules, then one can get a good buy. But, if one is not willing to go by the rules, do not bid!!!

I bought my air-ticket via the internet many times, and never had any problems. Some times you can get better price depends on restrictions going with it, such as not refundable, not reendorsable, etc. Sorry about the site, because i am not in the USA.

Both Travelocity & Expedia on-line sites are well laid out & easy to use. Excellent for comparative shopping. <BR> <BR>Note some airlines, notably Southwest, don't show up on either Travelocity or Expedia. <BR> <BR>While searching tickets for LA to Greece this summer, I found that some flights that show uo on Expedia, do NOT show up on Travelocity, and vice versa! <BR> <BR>I also found that usually fares matched to the penny between Travelocity, Expedia, and the airline's own site, but not always! When there was a discrepancy, Expedia inexplicably had a 3-4% more expensive fare. <BR> <BR>In the end, the exact dates & flights I wanted wouldn't show up on either, and I wound up making the purchase at Air France directly. But Expedia & Travelocity were invaluable ..I would never have found the Air France flight without it. <BR> <BR>So best advice is, use both Expedia & Travelocity, there may be a pattern as to which carrier is most likely to meet your needs. Then double check at the airline's own site. Expedia & Travelocity have been especially convenient to use, I will go back there to make the final purchase as long as the price is about the same.

In response to Tom's reply, Southwest does show up when I use Travelocity. There is a trick though: if one chooses "Search All Airlines", the system lists Southwest but will not accept a flight leg on Southwest (and some other small airlines), because Southwest does not share round-trip fares with other airlines. If one instead selects "Search These Airlines" and enters only Southwest (WN), the itinerary will be accepted. <BR> <BR>Back to the original question: I haven't booked through an agent or over the telephone in a couple of years. The internet is the only way to go. BUT, as advised above, shop around. Also, I have noticed that on highly competitve routes (read Southwest), fare changes by individual airlines tend not to show up until the following day. For instance, last winter, Southwest set a ridiculously low fare from LAX to Nashville. American, TWA and others followed. When Southwest went back up, the others did immediately, but PremierTravel (the one I was using at the time) did not catch it until the next day. The result was that the low fare showed up, but was un-bookable. Very confusing. The American site, of course, provided the proper fare.

Lina- <BR> <BR>To date I've had very positive experiences booking on-line. I fly mostly United so their site is the one I am most familiar with but have used others as well. <BR> <BR>In general I like this method because you can: <BR> <BR>do your travel planning at your convenience <BR> <BR>compare flights between airlines rather easily <BR> <BR>select your own seats on some flights/sights <BR> <BR>take advantage of internet specials <BR> <BR>Good luck and happy travels. <BR> <BR>-MDM

I always use priceline.com. Last year, Chicago to Frankfurt, Germany - $300. This year, Indianpolis to Seattle, $150!

Lina, <BR> <BR>I'll echo the other comments here--I've used Travelocity, Expedia, and Priceline, and I've never had a problem. Using Expedia last weekend, I bought a one-way ticket from Seattle to St. Louis for my mother-in-law for $144.00--amazing! Be sure you read and understand Priceline's restrictions before you try to use it--but otherwise, it's fine. <BR> <BR>I'll also put in a good word for bestfares.com. It's a Web site that offers info on some pretty good deals, including "Snooze You Lose" deals that pop up on the reservations system but that may be available for only a few minutes or hours. They also offer some "Member only" deals that are good--in one case (pre-Priceline days), I was able to save nearly $600 apiece on two last-minute roundtrips from Raleigh to Seattle. A lot of the information on the site is free to look at, but you can't get the "Member only" deals without coughing up $59.95 a year, which gets you a book on discount travel, a monthly magazine, and access to everything on the Web site. Because they saved me almost $1200 on the aforementioned two tickets, they might have a customer for life. If I traveled more, I'm sure I would've saved more money by now in using bestfares.com. <BR> <BR>Anyway, the bottom line is that buying online is pretty painless and could save you a bundle. Oh, one other thing--I've bought both E-tickets and paper tickets online. The E-tickets are convenient because you don't have to worry about losing a paper ticket, although once when an airline cancelled a flight and transferred my reservation to another airline, I almost missed the flight because the other airline apparently didn't receive my transferred E-ticket--in this case, having a paper ticket probably would've helped. <BR> <BR>Don

I buy all my airline tickets online, as well as hotel, car, and even train tickets. Research using Expedia and Travelocity. Sign up to be on their fare alert services and when a cheap fare pops up, you can grab it. Some individual airline sites (Delta, Continental, Air New Zealand) even let you pick the seat you want. The online sites usually give you 1000 mile bonuses . <BR>I use raileurope.com. You can purchase any type of ticket and it's very convenient.

Here's a vote against buying on-line. For the last couple of years, I bought on-line whenever possible, but having had a bad experience with an e-ticket made me realize that paper tickets are far more flexible and reliable. As cancellations and delays have become the rule rather than the exception, I never want to venture to the airport with just a "virtual" ticket -- I want one I can take to any ticket counter and have recognized as proof I've paid for passage. <BR> <BR>And Travelocity now insists on charging for FedEx delivery ($10) for a paper-ticket, while the airlines will send the tickets to you by mail for free (at the moment). So bye-bye, Travelocity.

This has only happened once, but it is enough to make me pay attention. Expedia is NOT required to notify you when an itinerary changes after yu purchase the ticket, so beware. After purchasing a ticket, and printing out my confirmation, the airlines made a scheduling change. I just "so happened" to go onto Expedia to check my itinerary and there was a flashing red sign that said - itinerary change. I went in and found out that the airline had pushed one of the flight times by twenty five minutes, which would have made it impossible for us to make our connection. Any changes at that point need to be made over the phone, and though they were helpful, the que to talk to a "live" person was long. Every thing was taken care of, but it would have been an unpleasant surprise to get to the airport the day I was travelling and find out about the changes - and have to make adjustments on top of that. <BR> <BR>I still buy on-line - it is so easy. But, I keep an eye on my itinerary - especially if I buy more than two weeks in advance.

I have had very good experiences buying tickets online. If traveling within the US try lowestfare.com. I found great airfare prices there. Also, I recently went to Rome using eurovacations,com. They had lower fares than Expedia or Travelocity to some of the cities I entered. Using the internet is the best way to buy a ticket and you can produce your own paper trail if you incur any problems. Good luck!