Comments on: Getting There On The Cheap: Discount Travel Sites

By: CA

CA — Wed, 21 Feb 2007 04:54:16 +0000

It’s been mentioned…but Kayak is consistently the best. It takes the airfare search up a notch by prowling through the aggregators (Orbitz, Travelocity, etc.) as well as the primes (aa.com, etc.). Their real-time flight screening is also a huge time-saver, avoiding the endless cycle of re-loading as you tweak departure/arrival airports, dates, etc.

More importantly though, they have a feature (”Buzz”) that plots lowest recent airfare to any region of the world on a google maps interface. I use it all the time to look for regional deals (and alternative destinations). Whenever I have some pile of cash that needs to be spent, it paints a pretty compelling list of options.

Mobissimo started out strong, and SideStep generally performs well, but don’t use their crappy IE add-in.

NOTE: In the interest of full disclosure, I should point out that piles of cash have been woefully absent of late.

By: Getting There On The Cheap 2: Flying As A Courier at Dethroner

Getting There On The Cheap 2: Flying As A Courier at Dethroner — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 19:12:49 +0000

[...] Recent Comments Paul D. on Dethroner Asks You: Cheap Long-Term, High-Mileage Car Rental?Al on Getting There On The Cheap: Discount Travel Sitesmaven2k on Dethroner Asks You: Cheap Long-Term, High-Mileage Car Rental?memos to the future on Dethroner Asks You: Cheap Long-Term, High-Mileage Car Rental?bridgitte on Buckley’s Mixture: Medicine From Hell That Works [...]

By: Al

Al — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 18:59:21 +0000

I’ve done some extensive travel in my day, and always go for the cheapest service that I can stand (ie, if I’m crossing over to the atlantic, I never go lower than austria air, it’s worth the cash) and the sites I use are expedia of course, or cheaptickets, but I’ve often found that I can build better trips myself through direct websites. Between southwest, jetblue, and iflygo, I end up spending about $200 bones to roll round trip cross country with a little planning. Half the fun of the trip is piecing together something that’s cooler than the package deals out there. Watch yer travelzoo and shermans travel for great deals on stuff, then put together a killer weekend on the cheaps (under 400 bucks is a bimonthly expense for me to go visit someplace)

By: Alex

Alex — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 21:06:55 +0000

My bad. Thanks, Mr. Kite…fixed!

By: Mr Kite

Mr Kite — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 20:07:59 +0000

LAG is in Venezuela… I sure hope you meant LGA…

By: bridgitte

bridgitte — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 19:14:27 +0000

Best advice for flying on the cheap – get a relative who works for an airline. Ain’t nothin’ like $60 RT fares to Atlanta ;)

By: robert

robert — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 17:33:13 +0000

In my experience the best luck I’ve had with getting cheap tickets is to date/marry someone that works for the airlines (helps if they are high-up, too). I dated a girl for 3 years that was a half-assed-muckity-muck for a major airline. I tried to make it my goal to drink first-class, complimentary booze in an amount equal to or greater than my greatly reduced fare. Example: First Class RT from the ORD to Madrid: $400 for 2 tickets. Flight was aprox. 20 hours, round-trip. Can two people drink $20/hour of makers mark or tanqueray?

I’ll quit my bragging. Since we broke up two years ago, I’ve gone back to flying coach (arrrrggggghhhhh…..) and now shop strictly based on price. Kayak works well and I’ve also had good success with mobissimo.com. Those sites are much better than orbitz/expedia/etc because they search the airlines websites directly. I know that Suncountry tries very hard to limit ticket sales to their own site, so a meta-engine comes in very handy.

By: Damien Guard

Damien Guard — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 15:29:11 +0000

It’s always worth trying the airlines direct once the discount sites have shown you who services the route you are interested in for a fair price. Often they’ll match or be a little cheaper as you’re not paying Expedia/Travelocity etc.’s commission.

In Europe many of the cheapest airlines are not available from the discount sites and again you have to go direct – EasyJet and Ryan Air are two off the top of my head.

[)amien

By: Covert7

Covert7 — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 15:23:37 +0000

Yeah, I’ll second Kayak as well. Got some great tickets out to Denver in a couple weeks through them. Nice stuff. :)

By: Ryan

Ryan — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 15:09:18 +0000

My favorite site to search for plane tickets is http://www.kayak.com. The site is merely an aggregator of CheapTickets, Orbitz, and every major airline’s website, but what’s really cool about the site is the way you can modify your search in real time on the left side of the screen.