Getting There On The Cheap: Discount Travel Sites

In his amusing little number, “A to B and Back Again: The Philosophy of Andy Warhol”, the bewigged author mentions something about how, whenever he travels to Venice or wherever, the aspects of the trip he’ll remember the most are often the flight out and the flight attendants who served his drinks. Maybe he was just bullshitting us; Warhol loved to mess with folks’ heads, and even in his writing he was so awfully deadpan that you could never really tell when he was being sincere. It’s worth noting here that he always flew first class.

I’ve been in first class a grand total of twice, both times the result of being bumped up due to overbooking. It was cool, the seat was great, the food was better, and the service more considerate. When I look at the numbers involved in that kind of upgrade, however, it hardly seems worth it. Nope, I’m a plebian traveler, and I always aim for the cheapest flight possible: Enter discount travel websites.

In my experience, Priceline, Orbitz, Discountairfare, Expedia, Travelocity, and Hotwire are the six best sites for this purpose. Actually, more and more I have found that Hotwire is the best one. It seems to be capable of finding the cheapest deals possible, lowballing Orbitz and Expedia, who have been my favorites until the last year.

I recently had to travel on a spur of the moment, to a secondary market—Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Though Mitchell Field is an international airport, it is by no means a major hub, and oftentimes it is well worth flying into O’Hare instead. Circumstances prevented this as being an option for me this time around, but I did compare the option just to make sure. With every other discount travel site, O’Hare seemed to be the cheaper destination, but somehow, Hotwire found that I could save the most amount of money on the most direct flight from the most convenient airport for me (LGA), over the most convenient time window. Hooray, Hotwire, go Hotwire. I lucked out.

That said, often times it’s been worth going directly to the airlines themselves. For example, we had a golden opportunity fall into our laps and this Friday we’ll be heading to San Juan to get the hell out of this arctic crap for a few days. Spent two days straight trying to find cheap flights through all the discount sites, but for some reason Jet Blue’s site offered the best deal; the exact same flight that we booked through them was at least $20 more through the discount sites. However, due to the huge problems Jet Blue has been experiencing lately with cancelled flights, we’re a little worried that we won’t make it after all. Wish us luck…

Have you had any glowing experiences in saving on airfare worth reporting back to us? How about the opposite – ever aim for the super saver, only to have to take a red eye on some puddle jumping turboprop, with three layovers? Know of any hot deals available right now?