Is SideStep a good one to use? Is there another better? I'm looking for airfare for my kids Dec 28th to Jan 30th. to Tampa. One set will be coming from Cleveland and another set from Houston. We were going to meet in the Keys but it got too expensive so we booked a condo at the beach in Indian Shores to celebrate the holidays. Am I too far out to get any kind of deal? Or, is it just going to be expensive period. Thanks.

It is an expensive time of year to fly south. Check itasoftware, travelocity, expedia, orbitz and then individual airline websites, including jetblue, southwest and any other airline you can think of - it is labor-intensive.

You are definitely not too far out. Deals are fewer than they used to be.

i like kayak.com

I like kayak better than sidestep as it seems to give many more flight options and in some cases better pricing. I posted in an earlier thread that it looks like orbitz offers kayak some discounted rates on certain flights. I'm sure that all depends on time of year, destination, etc.

-Bill

you can download sidestep`s tool bar. Then whenever you look at another site, sidestep pops up too, and you can comparison shop.

As Pat mentioned, a little trick I learned was to do the search on www.kayak.com in business class and sidestep will do the work on the left panel in coach class. It is a good way to compare prices between the two classes.

Thank you. I just downloaded the SideStep toolbar. When should those dates be purchased by? Will they get more expensive or be unavailable? I've never purchased tickets during the holidays before.

I have had better luck on Yahoo Travel lately.

I find www.zuji.com.au an excellent website for cheap airline tickets, which the travel agents usually can't match.

my favorite is still www.kayak.com

Has anyone used priceline.com for airfare? It allows you to name your price for the fare. Sounds like you pick the dates you want to travel, and location and once you confirm that then they tell you the flight time. Is that the only "catch". Sounds too good to be true!??

Problem with using Priceline for air travel is that you can't specific the time you want to fly. That's way too inconvenient for most people.

Unlike hotels, where you can check-in anytime after 3pm.

I just found a site that answers my question. BookingBuddy. http://www.bookingbuddy.com/?source=...r_textlink_ros
I had never heard of it but it did give me the lowest rate.

I think there is no single site that will give you the absolutely lowest fare, because I have found no single site that covers all airlines. Some discount airlines, which often have very good fares, apparently don't participate in the price search engine wars. For your proposed trips, perhaps Southwest would have the lowest fares, but you can only find their fares by going to their web site. Other than Southwest, I don't know which discount carriers are covered by the search engines, and which are not.