Hey people. I'm wondering if anyone has any tricks on getting the lowest fares flying from Los Angeles or Burbank to Ottawa, Canada. I'm finding the prices quite high. I need to travel June 29th and return July 4th. Any suggestions are totally appreciated

ooooh....expen$ive time to travel - July 4. Have you tried Sprit? They usually have some pretty competitive flights from lax - www.spiritair.com

What is your ideal price range?

Spirit flies to Canada?

I use www.ITASoftware.com but you cannot book airfare with them. You can copy the info exactly and then book with www.SideStep.com . They are also a good search engine.

$564 cheaptickets on Air Canada flying from LAX change in Montreal
$553 Air Canada from Bur change O'Hare (found on kayak.com)

There are slightly cheaper flights with 2 changes but not worth the trouble.

Sidestep leads you to a booking agency...I have always gotten the info from Sidestep and gone straight to the airline website and saved at least the booking fee.

you have two things working against you - firm dates and holiday travel. So high fares wouldn't surprise me.

Can you adjust your dates - if not, you are pretty much stuck w/ the $550+ mclaurie found.

I had done some major searching and discovered the same things. The only deal I found was on HOTWIRE. It was very low but that means I have to be super flexible in times since I can't choose. It might be worth saving hundreds of dollars though.

Anyone ever do that?

That's really interesting, since I've yet to see a lower price on PL or Hotwire that can't be gotten conventionally.

I'm not that brave, is it just you flying? Are you in a hurry? Do you have a lot of patience? If you answered yes, no and yes, then go for it.

I've helped friends use both priceline and hotwire for prices. You can often, but not always, beat conventionally available fares. To do this on priceline, you do have to use the bidding part, not the fares they list.

You can read hotwire's terms to see what flexibility you need. They will tell you what times your flight might leave (for example, between 6am and 10pm) and how many layovers you might have maximum, plus the maximum time for each layover.

Only you can decide if those restrictions balance the cost savings. If you need to be in Ottawa or back in LA by a particular time on your travel day, though, this won't work for you. Keep in mind that with a short trip, you could lose a lot of time. Don't know if that matters to you. But you could, in theory, arrive in Ottawa very late on the 29th and leave very early on the 4th, leaving you only 4 days there. Don't know either what flight times you're seeing on conventional search sites, so maybe that doesn't matter.