Hi all, Kim Genardo at NBC 17 aired a story on finding good airfare prices last night during the 7 pm news. If you are going to be flying in the future, some of the info may be helpful. She and I talked about ways to cut air travel costs especially by booking online. She was interested in ideas that most people could handle like kayak.com, travelocity, etc and how those sites work. We focused on more mainstream ideas that most people could figure out, not the the more radical/time intensive ideas that most people would not consider (like openning extra credit cards just to get airline miles - which I do not recommend). Below is the info I provided on a number of the top sites for finding good bargains on airfare as well as some tips to remember when looking for good rates. Keep an eye on www.skybus.com. Could be some great deals starting the end of May. Here is the link to the story: http://www.nbc17.com/midatlantic/ncn/news.apx.-content-articles-NCN-2007-04-30-0009.html If you have any other thoughts on saving on airfare, please share. I would love to add them to the list. Faye Recommended Sites for Airline Travel Deals Orbitz, Expedia, Travelocity, Priceline, and Hotwire are the gold standard for online travel sites. These online travel companies offer travel deals for flights, hotel, cars, vacations, cruises, and tickets for activities in the cities you are visiting. They are full- service travel sites that e-mail deals right to your inbox or through an RSS feed. http://www.orbitz.com http://www.expedia.com http://www.travelocity.com http://www.priceline.com http://www.hotwire.com http://www.kayak.com/ Kayak.com is a travel search engine started by the founders of Orbitz, Travelocity and Expedia. It offers one stop shopping for comparing rates from various online travel agencies, consolidators such as Orbitz and major airlines and low-cost carriers. Go to the Buzz section of Kayak.com and you can see the best deals from RDU to anywhere in the world. htp://www.travelzoo.com Travelzoo.com publishes a weekly travel deals newsletter, the Top 20 list, which comes out on Wednesdays. Like www.Kayak.com, they direct you to other vendors for ticket purchase. The newsletter alerts readers to deals for airfare, lodging, cruises, car rental and vacation packages. http://www.cheapflights.com/ Another price comparison site, cheapflights.com offers travel deals throughout the world. They also offer some good travel advice in the section called "Useful flight tools". http://www.southwest.com Not only do they offer good everyday deals on flights, they also have a special program you can download called DING that allows you to receive up to the minute deals that are sent to your computer. But beware, they don't last long! You can choose to see deals for up to 10 airports of your choice and get live updates from your cities. http://www.jetblue.com Another discount airline, Jetblue flies out of Raleigh/Durham and offers competitive rates. Click on Travel Deals and you can see current deals from Raleigh to various destinations. http://www.studentuniverse.com/ This site offers deals to students and faculty of colleges, community colleges and universities. You can search for airfares, car rentals, lodging, and international rail passes. They even have a section that allows you to search for hostels. I found hostel rates 5 miles from Disney in Florida starting at $19 per night. http://www.skybus.com Skybus is a start-up carrier that is offering at least 10 seats for $10 per seat one way on each of its flights through December 15. The $10 flights do not include taxes and fees, but you can still get a fantastic deal even with the added fees. On May 29, they will add service to Greensboro/Winston-Salem, NC. Other cities they now service or will begin servicing soon include Columbus, OH, Burbank, CA, Richmond, VA, Fort Lauderdale, and Oakland, CA. http://www.seatguru.com/ Seatguru.com is a great resource for airplane seating and in-flight amenity information. They offer 275 airplane seatmaps from over 40 airlines. They recommend good seats and even tell you which seats to avoid. Other travel search engines worth considering: http://www.sidestep.com/, http://www.mobissimo.com/, http://www.tictrip.com/ Key Tips to finding the least expensive airline tickets: * Compare, compare, compare. That is rule number one when seeking the best prices. Look at 3 or more online travel sites to make sure you are accessing all the available deals. * Book early – the earlier you book, in most cases, the better the deal. Booking 21 days in advance will often result in significant savings compared to booking at the last minute. There are some deals to be had on last minute flights when an airline just wants to fill the seat. As a general rule, though, if you need to be somewhere at a certain date and time, depending on a last minute seat for a good deal is nto your best option. The seats may fill up or they may not offer any last minute deals on a flight you want. * Have the deals sent to you – many online travel sites offer free newsletters with daily or weekly deal alerts. If you are signed up to receive the information, you will not miss the best buys. * Be flexible – willingness to travel during the week, stay over a Saturday night, fly in the middle of the night, and fly in and out of alternate airports can also save you lots of money. The more flexible you are, the more money you can save. * Find the best ticket for your situation – your needs will be different if you are flying alone vs. traveling with 3 children, for instance. Finding a deeply discounted ticket sounds great, but if you have to change planes 2 times and land in the middle of the night in a strange town, with 3 kids, it might not be worth saving $30 a ticket. * Read the fine print – be sure you calculate the total cost after all taxes and fees have been added. Those fees can add an extra $50 or more per ticket to the price initially advertised on a search engine. One ticket price that appeared incredibly low on a site yesterday had an additional $97 in taxes and fees bringing the final price to more than other discounted tickets. * Get yourself bumped – if your flight is full, volunteering to be bumped (moved to a different flight) can result in travel vouchers or free roundtrip tickets. * Use your frequent flyer miles (and you may need to use them soon). According to Clark Howard, some airlines are changing expiration dates on miles and are requiring that they be used in a year and a half. Here is the link to the information on his site: http://clarkhoward.com/shownotes/category/10/104/206/ * Fly nationally and internationally for free as an air courier. Here is a link to more information through tictrip.com: http://www.tictrip.com/air-courier. Additional Resources * http://www.tripadvisor.com/ offers over 5 million traveler reviews and opinions of hotels and vacations.
I hope it helps! And it was great to meet you at the Straw. festival on Saturday, Pat! HG, you are pitiful! You can come with us to the Aquarium on Friday - oh wait a minute - I forgot, you don't like kids - forget it! ;-) Faye
Skybus will be an interesting airline to follow, currently they will service about 10 cities from Columbus (I believe from thee old America West Hub). The nearest place to catch a skybus, at least they are honest, will be Greensboro. The following site is dedicated to information on Skybus http://blogs.usatoday.com/sky/skybus/index.html These are good sites for initially identifying your airline, I then go directly to the Delta, Northwest or other airlines website and purchase the tickets. In almost all cases you will get the ticket as cheap or cheaper than the above sites and you save the services fees. In addition you often have more flexibility and if you choose your seats in advance you stand a better chance of actually having that seat. The one exception is if you choose multiple carriers, then you need to use one of the above sites. Keep in mind that if you use multiple airlines you drastically increase the chance of loosing bags in the transfer, when the bags are lost I wish you good luck on having an airline say it was their fault. Also if you use the multiple carrier option make sure you leave at least two hours between flights. If you miss your connector don't expect a lot of sympathy from the other airline unless they are a partner airline. If you do this option I always use the "Preferred Alliance" option to avoid this problem.
on a note along these lines I've signed up for Airfarewatchdog and they offer some killer deals that you can find online without having to search through all the indivual sites for the best deals.
