mireaux7

what do you consider to be the best airfare site to save money onm airfare on? priceline? orbitz? expedia? list your favorite site, and any personal experience you had, and any extraordinary deals you obtained from them. also list any techniques you have to save the most money. a common money-saving technique on priceline is to be very flexible with your travel dates and choice of airports. this can save you hundreds of dollars this way, so you can spend your savings on your trip!

KarenD

None. Southwest airlines wins hands down. (I've not flown JetBlue, however) They are never listed on any other airfare sites because they are so darn cheap and probably don't make deals. I'll drive an extra hour just to leave from Louisville so that I can fly Southwest. Every day of the week has the same price, there are no Saturday stay reqirements, and a one-way ticket is 1/2 price of round trip....as it should be! I wish they flew everywhere.

mireaux7

southwest is good, and cheap as you mentioned. they have some practices in place that draws intrigue, such as why they dont sell roundtrip airfare. also something i recently noticed is that, when you visit southwest.com and are searching for a possible reservation, the information in relation to your available choices will change based upon what you input as your departure code. for example, and you can try this yourself to see what im talking about. go to southwest.com, then go to their reservations section, as if you were possibly making a reservation. now before you do anything,.notice that honolulu is available in the arrival section as being a choice to arrive at from your destination point. Ok, then input DFW as your departure airport,.wow,.what happened to Honolulu,it sunk into the pacific never to be seen again,.or more likely, southwest doesnt offer a one-way flight from dfw to honolulu..i dont know why? it would seem logical to me if you presented them with funds and a desire to go, they would take your money and make the flight happen. southwest basically has very thought-out strategies in place that keep their airfares low,.and sometimes questionable

Maggi

I get a daily email from airfarewatchdog.com. You can book through their site, but you don't have to - you can go to the airline's site and book directly. I have seen some incredible deals come through there. If you check the site daily you can be on top of the cheapest fares and act on them immediately.

snowblader

Check out http://www.trip-information.com

it has information regarding different search sites

TioGringo

Don't rely on ANY one site.

That *DEFINITELY* includes southwest, no matter how many folks are addicted to it. If you're buying less than 21 days in advance, you can almost ALWAYS beat the Southwest fares on major airlines, *AND* get assigned seating and better service.

One of the best general-purpose tools for getting your baseline low fares is the flexible search tool on Travelocity. It's *FAR* more reliable than anything you'll find on Expedia or Orbitz, though it's still not perfect (sometimes has a knack for "finding" fares that are impossible to actually book). Also, Travelocity does *FAR* better at finding good fares to destinations outside the U.S. than either Expedia or Orbitz (which are generally too provincial in their limited geographic constraints).

I've also been doing the lists off airfarewatchdog.com --- GREAT site with solid, unbiased info.

I've got some other ideas for sites that can help you find cheap airfare:
http://www.epinions.com/content_4278689924

Have fun!
Mark

RBCal

In my opinion www.kayak.com is the best since it simultaneously searches many sites and also nearby airports. For last minute trips www.site59.com is also good.
However, it is best to check several sites to see if you can find anything lower.
Southwest and Jetblue are only useful for domestic fares.

divingaggie

mireaux--The Wright Amendment doesn't allow any flights from Love Field (where southwest is based) to any states that are not contiguous to Texas. Now you can also fly to Kansas and Missouri, I think. So that's why you can't fly Southwest from DAL to Honolulu. Southwest doesn't fly out of DFW.

I personally use American for most of my flights, and I have found that I get the best fares from their website.

jamaltay

Southwest is alright is you don't mind riding in a greyhound bus.

I prefer a higher class of service than that.

8-)

Saraho

ttt

gail

itasoftware.com gives a fairly comprehensive chart of many major airlines, also indicating defects in any route (such as long layover, change planes twice in red)

But you can not book from this site - and on occasion when I went to individual airline website fare was not as listed on itasoftware.

happytourist

I'm a fan of Southwest but sometimes American Airlines will beat those prices. Example: Last month a roundtrip Little Rock to Portland fare was $300 on Southwest but $189 on American. I will often search the travel sites but then I always go directly to the company website.

bestfares.com. Best deal several years ago was the $250 roundtrip from DFW to Madrid. Only caution is that the routes and stopovers might be a little odd.

mireaux7

Little Rock to Oregon or Maine,.theres 2 Portlands

happytourist

Whoops--should have said Portland, Oregon.

microdol

I'd have to agree - I USED TO THINK Southwest was the 'only' way to fly, and since then I have taken Continental, Delta and Northwest. All have comparable prices, so go check out the AIRCRAFT you will be flying in (on www.seatguru.com), when I flew NW, I was stuck in a small jet crammed against the bulkhead - never again !
Of the 4 I've flown in the last 4 monhts, my opinion is Continental is the best.

microdol

P.S. when flying these airlines, or any others, if you have to switch planes to continue to your destination, TRY HARD to allow for a one hour layover between flights - twice in the last month I had 25, and 45 minutes in between flights, and missed them, and had to take later flights, one was 4 hours later.
Why ? Because the plane flying in to the originating departure airport for me to get on was late getting out of its' airport by over an hour......

Intrepid1

www.onetravel.com

seattlescuba

i would still insist that priceline is the best. its the only site that gives you the name your own price option. using that, i have saved a bundle of money.