Cheap Flight Website Recommendation.
I'm wanting to book flights to the US and will be travelling in in about 2-4 weeks, any recommendation on cheap flight sites?
It seems the prices are pretty expensive at the moment, and especially since we are supposed to be in a financial down turn (I get it really is all made up).
It seems the prices are pretty expensive at the moment, and especially since we are supposed to be in a financial down turn (I get it really is all made up).
Post edited by Scottie_uk on
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I don't know if they have charged me or what??
Well, hey, at least they got something out of the "deal" ... now they have all your info! :-P
It's like bidding on players in Football Manager.
my friends wife is a teacher and they can never get cheap flights.. ONLY get em if you book WELL in advance.
do you have to go such short notice and make sure you pick Heathrow this time :)
airport tax etc mess people up.. wonder if it's cheaper to fly to say ireland / france THEN to the US from there. crazy but true..
Try deleting your cookies for that site. I've heard anecdotal evidence (specifically about the Ryanair site) that they track repeat visits and deliberately bump up the price, presumably to make you think "ooh crap, better book it now before it goes up any more".
(I've also seen websites that have systematically tested this claim and concluded that it's a load of old cobblers. Doesn't hurt to try, though...)
So Scottie is coming to the U.S.... which part if I may ask? There are WOSsers in Alabama, Indiana, Georgia, Washington, California (me!), Texas... But usually no one comes to California. :( What am I going to do with all this beer? :-P
Anyway, enough blathering. A couple of years ago a work mate was looking for some cheap flights and knowing what I know I got an old work colleague too check the several fares databases he had access to to see if there was anything cheap. Nothing whatsoever, even taking removal of agency fees into account. Expedia beat it by quite a bit and I can imagine nothing has really changed. Basically the days of dirt-cheap flights have all but gone unless you can get a last minute deal.
Sure it's just a call, what you can do is use your sites to find the best deal, then note who the airline is....so say your best deal is $750 on Expedia and the airline is continental. Note the flight numbers, call up continental and say, Hey I was on Expedia and got these flights for $750. Can you better that?
They often will, maybe only by $20 but it's still $20.
Often I've not even bothered calling, find the best deal on the 'cheap' sites, then go to the airline website and look it up there, often as not its the same price or better.
In Scotties case trying to get a cheap ticket 2 weeks ahead isn't ideal. I read recently the best time to buy a ticket is 4-6 weeks before travel. I usually get it 2-3 months so next time I'm going to try the 4-6 weeks thing.
I've also flown standby a few times and saved a couple of hundred dollars, not recommended though, the stress involved isn't worth $200....
Houston might be a bit of an odd-ball destination though, it's a polluted industrial city that no one actually wants to go to except on business or to see family or friends, it's not exactly a noted tourist destination! Typically the end of week/weekend flights are quite full for people going/coming from business trips. BA have to run the midweek flights although they are lightly loaded because the business types sometimes need to go midweek, and wouldn't use BA at all if they didn't provide the flights (Continental also fly the route so there's competition). It's places that are nice that get all the tourist demand so will be hugely expensive however far in advance you book during spring break/school holidays/etc.
One strategy is to fly to an unpopular-with-the-tourists industrial destination then take an internal flight on SouthWest to wherever you want to end up. Book direct with the airline, book direct with southwest.com. (SouthWest is a bit like easyJet except they don't charge you for baggage or extras).
Incidentally, going via Ireland (Dublin) at least is good, because you go through immigration and customs in Dublin, not in the USA. This makes getting connections easier in the USA as you don't have to worry about the possible very long delays in customs/immigration. It also means if they find anything wrong with your paperwork or with you, instead of having a costly 10 hour flight when you're deported, you're almost home anyway so it lowers your financial risk. And you also get a United States - Dublin stamp in your passport which is quite unusual :-)
You might have a connecting flight but that's not a big deal for me, Houston to Paris, Paris to Manchester.