Playing the Fare Game
How many synonyms are there for 'flummoxed'? Let's see: confused, perplexed, stupefied, confounded, discombobulated.... Can you tell I've been trying to find a low airfare online?
We spend a lot of time here in the Travel section fielding emails, phone calls and chat questions from readers who want advice on airfares -- when to buy, why fares fluctuate so wildly, basically just how to game the system. We talk about the importance of shopping around, checking multiple sites, being flexible on dates, the best days to fly, using aggregator sites, Farecompare, etc., but the bottom line is this: You'll go nuts if you think airline pricing is in any way logical. Don't try to make sense of it, just pounce when you see a good fare.
Which doesn't mean the process doesn't remain maddening. Seems like every time I try to book a fare I go through the same emotions -- anger, denial, depression, etc. (haven't made it to acceptance yet). The latest was this week when I started researching fares for a summer trip to Quito, Ecuador. Stupidly, I didn't lock in the fare when I started searching. Little did I know that those seemingly exorbitant prices would look so good. Just a couple of hours later, prime flights were unavailable at the lower rates -- even though plenty of seats on those flights remained. Now, fares for even the non-optimum flights are up in the stratosphere. Am I driving up the price myself by searching so regularly? The thought crossed my mind, but our resident airfare guru, Carol Sottili, tells me that isn't likely. So I wonder: Should I lock these ridiculous high fares in, or sign up for email alerts and gamble that the fares will go down again? It's a crapshoot.
What booking sites do you swear by? Tricks you've used? Tell, tell, tell.
By K.C. Summers |
April 30, 2007; 9:43 AM ET
| Category:
Airfares
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K.C. Summers
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Posted by: Anonymous | April 30, 2007 11:19 AM
Try clearing your cookies before doing your next search for a flight. You might see some different fares.
Posted by: Ryan | April 30, 2007 11:48 AM
I've had good luck with farechase.yahoo.com lately - but I don't know if it works internationally.
Posted by: Sarah | April 30, 2007 12:16 PM
I still like SideStep as a starting point for fare hunting, however liking to a fare from their site is rarely successful, so I note the flights and go to the airline web site where I generally wind up with a better deal by $5-10. I get a broad enough range of prices that it's easy to decide whether to lock & load or to wait and gamble on a sale.
Posted by: Karen | April 30, 2007 2:09 PM
I'm a big fan of Kayak.com, with a window open to Southwest as well just so I can quickly compare everything.
Posted by: Matt C | April 30, 2007 4:11 PM
I'll second kayak.com, it lets you search flexible dates as well.
Posted by: Soelo | May 2, 2007 12:54 PM
I usually try bookingbuddy.com first to get a price comparison. After a few clicks, I zero in on the one set of flights that meets my needs and then go to the airline's website to save a little bit more (no need to pay service fees when you book directly instead of via a travel website).
Posted by: Rochelle | May 2, 2007 2:04 PM
Sometimes multiple carriers will be selling tickets at widely and wildly different prices for the same physical flight. This is called code sharing and each company does whatever it can to sell its share of the seats. I've bought a ticket from USAirways for a flight operated by United, saving nearly $100 and still getting United frequent flier miles.
Posted by: Jim | May 2, 2007 2:13 PM
open up 4 tabs in your browser, login to bookingbuddy.som, kayak.com, sidestep, and farecompare.com. enter the same days and click search, now you've got a HUGE choice...
Posted by: melinda | May 5, 2007 3:48 PM
I don't know whether the Post should share this, but there was a great article in the NY times a couple weeks ago, which had 4 or 5 different links (including kayak and farecompare): http://travel.nytimes.com/2007/04/15/travel/15pracdeals.html
Posted by: Mike | May 8, 2007 4:44 PM
The comments to this entry are closed.
We don't try to "game the system" we try to keep the system from "gaming" us.