I put the airfare search engines to the test
 

Yesterday I decided to put a bunch of the airfare search engines to the test. I put in the identical dates of travel from Boston to Paris CDG May 25 - June 10. I've been poking around for the last few months, so these dates aren't arbitrary, they are as of today the cheapest early summer dates from a consensus of airlines to/from these locations(if I wait until June to leave it gets much more expensive). I searched about 20 airfare search engines/consolidators like orbitz, mobissimo etc., and also about 15 of the major airlines themselves.
So what did I find out?
You would think that they all should come up with the same fares. In some cases yes, but in most cases no. The craziest thing I found was that I could find cheap fares on Orbitz for an American Airlines flight - but when I went to American's website, the exact same flight was more expensive(sometimes by $150 or more - and yes, I did calculate in the taxes and yes the cheaper flight did have seats available for purchase). This does not make sense, but it happened for the Iceland Air flight as well. I also found a few "white label" consolidators fares to be the cheapest of them all. From what I understand, the airlines sell some of their seats on some flights to travel agents/consolidators, and if they don't list the particular airline(they call it a "white label" fare) you can save 10 -15%. The bottom line is that it pays to really shop around. In my opinion, here are the better sites I found: sidestep, mobissimo, itasoftware, onetravel, 1800flyeurope and airfare.
Here are the others that I used with less success: hotwire, travelocity, orbitz, expedia, kayak, airlineconsolidator, economytravel, cheapinternationalflights, whichbudget, lowestfare, bookingbuddy, affordabletravel, airvalues, cheapflights, airgorilla.
The individual airlines sites had the highest fares by far; I would start with the search engines first and only seach the airline sites after, just to double check. Have I left any great sites off my list?

http://airfarewatchdog.com/

Incredibly helpful.

I just checked the dates you used:

For AA BOS-CDG non-stop, the fare is the same on aa.com or itasoftware or Orbitz (except for the $10 service fee). $784.90.

Sometimes, it can simply be timing. The fare may be there when you check one site, not there when you check the other one.

Hi W,

Very good of you to search the fruits of your labor.

So, which did you choose? :)

((I))

I haven't booked yet, I'm waiting for my vacation request to clear. But I'm eyeing a consolidator fare of $1790 -all taxes included for 3 people(my daughter gets a 25% discount). I usually shoot for $500 or less per ticket, but with the fuel costs so high, this fare seems pretty good.

www.onetravel.com
www.itasoftware.com
www.mobissimo.com

This spring when I was buying for our September trip, I found that Orbitz was the best of the search engines as well in some cases, and not so in others.

For example -- for an open jaw ticket -- DH and I flew out of Denver to London and home from Paris, we did better with Orbitz (and I checked ALL the big consolidators too).

But for the tickets I bought for my Mom & Aunt, going direct to one of the airlines proved cheaper, and Continental was the winner that time.

I do think sometimes it has nothing to do with anything except which way the wind is blowing one day to the next.

That's why it pays to watch tickets over time, use multiple sources, and strike when you're ready (and don't look back and check the prices again, just in case you didn't get THE best rate).

Happy travels,

Jules

I've been shopping similar dates (BOS-CDG 5/23-6/4). It makes your head spin!

Last year, I shopped and shopped. All of a sudden, $535 came up on Cheaptickets ($700 at Air France for same flights). Went right back up a day or two later. For weeks I was sure I was going to get an e-mail from CheapTickets about a pricing error. But, everything went fine.

I've had great luck with 1800FlyEurope now and again.

One thing you always have to remember is to clean the cookies out of your computer. Someone posted on this site that he would get different prices on the same site from his computer at work. He started cleaning out the cookies every time he searched and it make a difference. I tried it and he was correct. You can go to an airline website 5 times and get 5 different prices if you clean the cookies.

Ann,
I'll have to try and delete the cookies...those darn airlines!

DJK,
1800flyeurope has a nice nonstop for you on your dates for $631.26. Seems pretty good..although I imagine Iceland air is due for a cheap deal pretty soon..I checked seating on Iceland Air's flights for late May, and only a few seats are booked..

<b>rkkwan's</b> message is very important. Airlines will update their fares daily, sometimes more often, depending on pace of sales, fuel hedging contracts, trend lines that only their internal models can detect...

So sometimes you'll see a fare on one site that's higher or lower than on others, but it's just because the non-airline sites haven't gone back to the &quot;global distribution system&quot; (GDS) or airline sites recently enough. I've sometimes seen prices on Expedia that look cheaper than on airline sites, but when you actually go to ticket, you get a message &quot;Your fare has changed,&quot; gotcha.

AA for example, will frequently list fares with Sabre that Travelocity (which is owned by Sabre) will offer before other sites even know about them. Orbitz and Expedia (both part of Cendant - Barry Diller) often get other airlines' fares first. Timing is everything.

Clean the cookies???

I don't know if anyone else has tried them, but Flightcentre.us guarantees lowest fare on international flights. I have searched myself and got the lowest fare I could. Then I called them and after they searched and gave me a price, I gave them the flight info I found and they actually came in about 5% lower.

I don't know if things have changed as I've not booked with Orbitz in a couple of times -- but fares that are available may not actually be available when you click on them.

I once though that I found a cheaper airfare on Orbitz than on AA. Within half an hour (I think), AA showed the lower fare. In fact, it was cheaper as Orbitz had a $10 booking fee (?).

So, as rkkwan said, it could be the timing. For JFK to CDG or LHR, I've usually booked directly with AA.

In my opinion Orbitz is great, but usually for open jaws.

&quot;in a couple of months&quot; -- sorry.

I didn't realize that cleaning out the cookies would change the prices. I have also been keeping an eye out for fares for Paris. We want to go in March and although I saw fares for $400 (LAX-CDG) with NWA on Expedia a few weeks ago I can't book right now because my husband is in the military and we can't ask for time off that far in advance (believe me, I was tempted to buy but we have had trips canceled in the past, I didn't want to take a chance).

Anyway, that same flight was about $200 more on the NWA site and I tried most of the other websites mentioned here for discounted tickets and none of them could beat that price.

I too have received the message of tickets no longer available or that they can process the request on expedia but I go back and click on it until they come up.

Since I can't buy them right now, I do save them under itineraries with the date and price just to compare later on how much they have gone up or down.

I just starated a thread on this same topic earlier tonight before I saw this one (title &quot;March airfares&quot;). But basically what I've been finding this year is that the airfare search engines are NOT beating the airlines own sites. In searing for tickets for March for New York to Paris I'm finding AirFrance's site has the lowest and Orbitz comes very close but all the others are significantly higher. I just tried all the sites mentioned here that I had not already tried (I have a list of about 10 I've been searching for about a month now). Very strange because in the last few years the opposite has been true (airlines own sites usually much higher). I wonder what's going on. Also, prices are 25-50% higher than the last three or four years for the same route the same dates.

Isabel,

I have seen a similar thing.
In 2002 our best price to Europe came thru a consolidator.
In 2005 our best price came direct (Delta).

I thought I had seen an old post where someone said Tuesdays and Wednesday at or just past midnight was a good time to find a few cheaper seats (day of week was supposed to be airline specific).

The clearing of cookies is an new idea.

I posted this earlier at another link but it appears more appropriate here. Anybody else had this experience? It was happy surprise to me:
My wife and I go to Europe about once a year and often we are looking for a multi-segment ticket. For example, next summer our tickets will be three segments: Pittsburgh to Venice to London to Washington, DC.
Orbitz does multi-city and we have been happy with them in the past so I type in my itinerary and dates and hundreds of flight itineraries or trips come up arranged from lowest price to highest price. In the past, I’ve just chosen “select” for the itinerary I wanted if I was happy the price, dates, departure times etc.
Here is the tip. I don’t know if this is an Orbitz glitch or what but Orbitz might even have a lower price than the lowest it offers you on your first search. Rather than select the lowest price trip, select instead “Choose flight 1”, and after you do, all flights that include the flight you selected as flight 1 come up. Logically you would think that the trip price won’t be better than what you have already seen. Not always true. Amazingly, you may see a price lower for same itinerary that had been the lowest on your first search. When I did this, the price fell from about $1,100 to about $900 and we bought the $900 tickets.
I haven't found this to be the case on simple round trips.
Tuscanson

Tuscanson - It's not uncommon for Orbitz to show that &quot;we have found a lower fare&quot; than it's previously displayed. Relatively rare for simply roundtrips, but if it's a complex itinerary - open-jaw, multi-segment, multi-carrier, etc.. - it does happen.

I don't know if the cookies trick really does work for Orbitz. I've tried it before, and sometimes the fares don't change at all.

I tend to think that it's a function of availability and when discounts are offered, etc. -- the cleaning of cookies and lower fares could very well have been coincidental.

Whatever it is, sometimes patience is a virtue. I remember that one year I waited a week or two before I saw the same low fare again, and this was very close to my departure date. We flew Swiss Air (probably 2003).

Cleaning the cookie is more likely to work for airline home sites than for a site like Orbitz -- I suspect I've caught American and Delta both jacking up prices when I shop over a period of hours or even days because so often, the second visit (even after a matter of minutes) always shows a higher (never lower) price.

One additional quirk seems to be that the very act of shopping may temporarily pull a deeply discounted seat out of availability. My husband and I were once shopping for a particular itinerary -- he on his laptop through his professional internet access and browser, I on the home access and another browser. It was obvious that when he pulled up a particular itinerary, it &quot;held&quot; the choice a while after he relinquished it and went on to another -- sometimes quite a while.

And yes, cleaning the cookies sometimes helps (although the First Principle is timing).

&quot;it 'held' the choice a while after he relinquished it and went on to another -- sometimes quite a while.&quot;

It's very plausible -- I've had this happen not on Orbitz specifically -- but just with booking tickets online in general, when there're very few seats. I'd click but not confirm and then open another browser, and there'd be no more seats.

Once I bought a ticket on Orbitz for one (when I should have bought for two). When I tried booking for two, the fare was not available.

I asked about it here.

I use Orbitz as a yardstick. Being able to select multiple flights is very important. When I'm ready to buy I see if anyone else can beat them.

I usually track prices six months out, typically when the prices are reasonable and the best flights are available. Unfortunately, sometimes I fail to jump on low fares thinking they will go lower.

Airgorilla.com always has the cheapest prices when I look, but have not followed through to reserve. Has anyone used them? Are they OK?

There is more to the value of a ticket than just the cost. I suspect that the tickets bought and resold by consolidators are of the use-or-lose variety, and very likely will not earn frequent flyer miles, if that is important to you. Tickets sold by the airlines are, at worst, non-refundable, which means you can change them, or even cancel them, and you will incur a penalty, but you will also have a credit with that airline for a future flight, and airline-sold tickets, in my experience, always earn some frequent flyer miles.

Also, I think we sometimes don't realize how in flux the business of selling tickets is. There may be thousands of us at the same time trying to buy a certain flight, and some of us may have reserved tickets, but later cancel the order, so it is hardly surprising that in the time between when we initiate our purchase, and the time we finalize it, the price may change, and certainly in the time between our search using one engine and a second search using another engine, availability of a certain-priced ticket may change. I reserved tickets on a domestic flight yesterday; when I checked with the same airline today, prices on some flights had gone up, and on some had gone down, so I'm going to check again just before my reservation expires, hoping to find a better deal.

I agree that the best procedure for buying an important ticket is to do a lot of research, checking when and by how much tickets on that route sold in past years, and come up with a price that will satisfy you (probably increasing the historical date if there are new taxes, or if fuel prices have soared), then look everywhere for someone who meets your price and buy right away, because many of us are also seeking that deal.

My rd,

Have you looked into the availability of catching a military hop. They have some great deals, but I think it is very like a stand-by basis. When I was a recruiter, one of out selling points was the availability of very low-cost travel, world-wide, and many of my friends would go on tourist travel for even as short as a weekend. Its definitely worth a look.

How do you find out about the military hop? I have never even heard of it before.

The military has a lot of cargo and passenger planes, and a lot of crewmembers who need flight time, so it is not uncommon for a reserve crew, for example, to schedule a flight to an attractive destination, just to get their flight time, and the extra seats in that flight are available to military and their dependents. I knew a pilot assigned to a base in Texas who made fairly regular &quot;training flights&quot; to Alaska, and somehow that plane was loaded with crablegs on the return flight.

The name of the office that is familiar with this no doubt varies with the branch of service, but if you talk to senior NCO's, or your travel office, they will tell you where to look. I seem to recall that there are higher and lesser priorities, and I think military and dependents moving to an overseas base, or coming home on vacation, were a very high priority, but at the same time, years ago there were a lot of seats that went unfilled.

Also, there are a number of military resort facilities, in addition to visiting quarters on overseas bases. I recall military resorts in Korea, Alaska, Hawaii, Florida (near the disney facility), and Germany, all of which have very reasonable rates, although some are not right in the main tourist areas. In Alaska, for example, the facility is in Seward; in Hawaii I seem to recall multiple facilities, one in the center of a national park.

Try these links, but they may be outdated:

http://spacea.info/linkslist.html

http://wpsv.wpafb.af.mil/recoffsites.htm

Whitey: Thank you! There were NO non-stop flights just the other day on 1800flyeurope.

Whitey: A million thanks for the 1800flyeurope tip!

Not only did I book May for $631.26, our dates in September priced out at only $552.85 - picture me thrilled! Because we can travel only on certain days and really appreciate non-stop flights, shopping is a bit more challenging for me. I usually book way ahead for specific flights and better seats, but so far no significantly better fares have come up between then and departure.

I was not really planning to book for May until February, but in my experience fares are more likely to go up than down when you are not flexible. I hadn't even looked at September yet!

To me the September fare was SO astonishing (we haven't gotten a fare under $600 since 1996 for our dates), I actually waited until the office opened and phoned to book.

Note that I got right through on the phone to one of the nicest and most efficient booking agents I've ever, ever, experienced.

DJK,
I'm glad to hear that you got some great pricing. Now you can relax and focus on some of the other parts of your trip. Do you think it's better to call, than to book directly online? I'm always afraid that they'll rush me and sneak in some extra charges.

When I selected the fare at 1800FlyEurope.com, the name of the airline was not shown. I was certain they were American's non-stop flights. But, there did not appear to be any way to select seats. So, I waited until they opened and phoned.

I was assisted by the nicest booking agent ever. The airlines are disclosed on the phone and they book your seats for you. This gent was really on the ball.

I was planning to go ahead with the $39 Travel Guard anyway, but had to actually ask for it after the seats were booked.

Really great is that you are sent an e-mail confirming your booking, which is not finalized until you reply to the e-mail. This is fantastic! Gives you a chance to check name spellings and triple check your days/dates.

Within an hour, my record locators for both trips came up on AA.com, where I could have selected or changed seats.

I've used 1800FlyEurope before, with the same pleasant and efficient service.

Mark to read later

How do you &quot;clean cookies&quot;?

(yes, I'm computer illiterate--would make a frowning face here, but don't know how)

So another question I have wondered for a while -- if you buy through Orbitz, consolidator etc/
what about all the airlines in bankruptcy or Delta, which may go on strike?

Another &quot;how to you clean cookies&quot; request.

Thanks.

Sandy

Depends on your browser, but you'll click on either &quot;tools&quot; (in IE, for example) or the equivalent and then on &quot;internet options&quot; (IE, again) or &quot;options&quot; or the equivalent. You should find a menu that offers you settings for &quot;general security&quot; or &quot;privacy&quot; or, in the case, it's the &quot;general tab. What you're looking for is the settings for &quot;cache&quot;, &quot;temporary internet files,&quot; and (or) &quot;cookies.&quot; On Netscape, it's &quot;Tasks&quot; then &quot;Privacy&quot; and then you'll see &quot;cookie manager&quot; -- go to &quot;view stored cookies&quot; and you'll be able to delete them all.

(Temporary internet files are usually just the webpages of a site you've recently visited; cookies are actual markers/tracking devices. It's worth deleting both sets of files.)

You should be able to &quot;delete all cookies&quot; and &quot;delete all temporary files.&quot; But be aware that when you delete cookies, you will have to re-enter identifying info for websites you go to frequently, such as airline home pages, etc.

Clear as mud?

Some got garblededed: You should find a menu that offers you settings for &quot;general security&quot; or &quot;privacy&quot; or, in the case of IE, it's the &quot;general&quot; tab.

Some sites will require you to have their cookies enabled before you can use the site.

I too have wondered about cookies, if whether they store the price of the flight the last time you visited, in order to manipulate your perception of the 'true' cost. On the other hand, the variation in airline prices due to market fluctuations is considerable, and besides, these sites know well that you have other sites at your disposal. All vendors try to maximize profits, but they also realize they need to attract customers to make any profit.

Cookies are also used, I suspect, for things like storing the flight you've selected while you proceed to the next page, say to enter in other details required for the booking.

Try checking fares after midnight on tuesdays, thats when the new fares come out.