I heard on the radio yestaurday that many of the airlines are now offering reduced fares. We purchased our tickets several months ago (San Diego to Rome) and now find that after doing a search on hotwire find we can get them significantly cheaper- $1100 down to under $700. We leave in less than three weeks- worth seeing if the airlines will let us cancel with little or no penalty and re-booking or not???????

I have found just the opposite (at least for future travel). Haven't booked tickets for a September trip to Germany but have been watching the fares via Orbitz, Expedia, etc. Yesterday and today looked on those web sites and the fares were much higher. Don't know if it's because the number of flights are being cut back. Now I will wait and hope for cheapers fares as we get closer to trip time.

I'm NO EXPERT on this Marcia, but why not start by calling the airline & asking if they'll drop the fare for you? If they say no, find out about cancellation policy.

Good advice, above. I recently picked up a voucher for the difference when a fare dropped. Even if you get nicked for a fee, you have a lot of difference to play with there and anything you get is money in the travel fund that you can use some time over the next year. But you need to check the fare with the AIRLINE for your exact itinerary and fare class(not Hotwire). You have nothing to lose by checking, so why not?

There is a good article about how to find and/or track airfares in USA Today: http://www.usatoday.com/travel/columnist/road/bly.htm<BR><BR>The &quot;Deal Detector&quot; feature on Orbitz sounds interesting, but apparently only functions for US trips at present.<BR><BR>I have farewatchers set up on Travelocity and on my MyYahoo page, which I'm constantly monitoring.

Hotwire doesn't reflect a published fare difference, so you won't get any voucher for that. It's like Priceline. Unless they really did lower the fare to the public, but you can't tell that on Hotwire.<BR><BR>I suppose you can see if they will let you cancel with no penalty (I think many are now, but you must rebook within 2003) as long as you want to take another trip to Europe this year. I don't think any airline is allowing people to just cancel and get a refund.<BR><BR>I haven't used Hotwire, but I don't think any airline is going to allow you to cancel your ticket and buy through Hotwire and get the difference in fares as a cash refund or even a voucher refund because that is &quot;distressed&quot; merchandise, so to speak.