searching for flights on Kayak
 

Just a report on the experience I had using Kayak.com to get tickets.

I was looking at the following flights for June and July:

SFO to Copenhagen Berlin to Paris Paris to San Francisco

When I went on Kayak in the morning, the first dozen itineraries included a return to San Francisco via Istanbul for a trip time of 38 hours, twice the normal time. Most of them involved WOW airlines, which is bare bones. Eventually I came across some itineraries on Delta and Lufthansa which cost about $1150 including the Berlin-Paris leg on either a budget airline or Air France. My wife was not home, and I wanted her OK before ordering the tickets. I went directly to the Lufthansa site to see their pricing (postings on Fodors often claim a cheaper ticket directly from the airline), and what was offered on Kayak for a June 1 flight from SFO did not exist according to Lufthansa.

In the afternoon, I went on Kayak to look for the same flights, but the only listings I found, for $1027 everything included, were via Air Canada. There were dozens of listings with slight variations in time and intermediate airline. When I clicked on the box to order the tickets, I was taken to Air Canada with only the business class listings for $30,000 for two. The listings after the $1027 offers on the Kayak site jumped to $1350.

So I went to the Air Canada site directly, and there found tickets for $997 plus fees which comes out to $1102 per person but without the Berlin-Paris connection. That comes out to another $100 for two.

The lesson I learned: On Kayak—still the most convenient for a global search—grab what interest you when you see it, because the listing might be completely different a few hours later.

Things change minute-by-minute.

Also use https://matrix.itasoftware.com (now a part of Google and might soon go away since Google Flights is now getting more dominant).

Did you consider cobbling together an itinerary on your own? Norwegian can get you from Oakland to Copenhagen for as little as $388 (depending on your needs for baggage etc. which are add-ons). Europe abounds with dirt-cheap flights city-to-city, and maybe you'd get a bargain flight home from Paris?

ITA is more convenient than Kayak,by far, since it allows for searching "nearby" airports, and plus-minus one or two days, and other handy details. But none of them is perfect and always totally up to date - the airlines change things minute-by-minute.

I got the tickets at a price that I consider good. Kayak also allows a nearby airport search, which, in the SF Bay area means that the cheapest flights take off from San Jose, which is not convenient for me.

I know that things change minute-by-minute price wise, but this total change of the first screens, from WOW flights to Air Canada, was a surprise; and then the fact that Air Canada did not work when accessing the flight information from Kayak.

Norwegian for as little as $388 is absolutely no frills, with a charge for checked luggage, possibly a charge for choosing your own seat assignment, and paying for food even on the transatlantic leg. Add these things to the base price and it quickly adds up to a cost that is within $100 of the flight I found.

I did cobble my own: went to Air Canada's own web site to get the transatlantic tickets, and to the easyJet site to fly from Berlin to Paris.

Well, there you go, you got what you needed. Good for you.

It sounds as though you thought I was complaining. I'm not, just reporting an experience which was frustrating at times.

I decided to compare ITA with Kayak using my original itinerary. ITA flights start at $2125 whereas Kayak still offers the Air Canada flights for $1026. I knew there was a reason why I abandoned ITA a few years back.