Three Hub Circus

You sit before the computer, ready to book plane tickets for your next trip. You’ve done everything you can to avoid this painful process, but you realize it must be done soon, or you’ll pay a fortune for tickets.  You pick a random site you’ve heard advertised, or one you’ve used before and type in the dates. As the site loads your results  you wonder what number will pop up. It feels as random as the wheel of a bingo game. Good news - this is a game that has some strategies and steps.

Strategy:

Be persistent and check a number of sites on a number of days. Consumer Reports recommends trying many different sites to get the best deal.  A good strategy is to check at least three different kinds of travel Web sites, such as those explained below. Also plan far enough ahead and check fares on a few different days, over a period of a week or two.  It can be a long and painful process to find good flights at good prices, but if you know what it takes to win the game, you will be more likely to reach your goal.

Steps:

Step 1: Search Engine Sites
First check ticket prices at a travel search engine site, which are like Google Web sites for airfare searches. They search up to 200 ticket sources, and often come up with the lowest prices. These are new in the online travel business, so you may not have heard of them, but they are user friendly and can give you great results. Kayak often comes out on top in reviews, but others to look into are FareChase, Yahoo!’s FareCompare, and Mobissimo for European flights.

Step 2: Online Travel Agencies
Next try one of the big three online travel agencies or “open sites” such Expedia, Orbitz or Travelocity. These sites get their own deals with airlines and can offer special fares. However, according to an article by Michael Shapiro of the Washington Post, these sites can be biased and feature results from airlines that give them the best commissions. Also, be aware that Orbitz is owned by American, Delta, United, Continental, and Northwest airlines. On the positive side, this will get you good deals on the tickets of these five airlines. However, due to antitrust issues, Orbitz cannot feature or negotiate deals with any other airlines, but does sell their tickets. A final drawback of the “big three”  is that some airlines, such as Jet Blue and South West, don’t allow their tickets sold through all of the open sites so they may not show up in your results.

Step 3: Airline Sites
Be sure to check the Web site for the actual airline once you have a flight in mind. They may offer an even lower fare and you have the comfort of dealing with the source.

Optional Step 4: Bidding Sites
If you are flexible and like more risk, you can check with the “blind” bidding sites such as Hotwire, which received an award from J.D. Power and Associates in a Travel Web Site Satisfaction Survey, or Priceline. On these sites, you set the price, and wait to see if an airline will match it. A Consumer Reports study found that these sites gave a lower price about half the time but had many drawbacks.  Negatives with booking at a blind site are that you do not know the airline until you enter your credit card; you cannot earn frequent flier miles; and you often have to change your itinerary to take advantage of the deal.

No matter stage of the game, when you find a fare that you like and feel like yelling “Bingo”, be sure to reserve or book it right away, because they can disappear fast.

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