This is probably a very naive question, but I don't care.

If I buy a flight through BootsnAll, it will be using ticketless travel. I have heard on the Rec.Travel.Latin-America newsgroup that one person in Peru had her ticketless voucher not accepted for a return flight to the United States.

What are the chances that some airline functionary on the ground will demand an actual bona-fide ticket?

I would be interested in hearing any or all opinions on this issue.

Jim Paris

Does anybody have any recommendations for "last minute" airfare websites? (The "in-laws" are coming into town in September, and as long as I'm not working, it will be an excellent time to escape Seattle.)

I'm already aware of TravelZoo and site59. If it turns out I won't be working, I'm going to want to jump on something last minute. I'm extremely flexible about the "where should I go" part as just about anywhere will be preferable to Seattle. Thanks.

Airfare Watchdog. Lake Tahoe (Reno, NV) for $69. ow ???

Or Kayak, but you would need to play around with destinations. If you register, you can search with "flexible dates".

quote:

Does anybody have any recommendations for "last minute" airfare websites?

I go to Smarter Travel for their last minute fares. They've also got a weekly email that will show you last minute (and not so last minute) trips from your airport of choice.

For those of you in the UK, and some european cities, there is a site called www.laterooms.com that is nice.

quote:

I'm already aware of TravelZoo and site59. If it turns out I won't be working, I'm going to want to jump on something last minute. I'm extremely flexible about the "where should I go" part as just about anywhere will be preferable to Seattle. Thanks.

Speaking of site59, a friend just pointed me to this little coupon site, that has some good discount codes, incl. $100 off a weekend trip!
Apparently, site59 discount/promo codes can be found at countless places around the net, just w/ a little Googling...here's this one for now.
Site 59 Discount Codes

I'm wondering if anyone knows of any websites that allow you to search fares (to anywhere, including international of course) by date - i.e., where you don't have to input a destination. I really don't care where I go, but would like to plan something around the holidays (high time, I know!!) based on cheapest fare... to anywhere! www.11thhourvacations.com used to offer a search engine like this, but they seem to have gotten rid of it. I booked a trip to Amsterdam two years ago on this website using this feature.
Mostly, I just use Kayak and Travelocity and keep putting in places I'd like to go around the dates I'm looking into but there must be a more time-saving way to do this!

I do have one helpful tip however...
BTW, Travelocity no longer allows searches for international destinations using the flexible date feature. BUT you can get around it by using their affiliate: Zuji.com. This is an awesome website to search for destinations using flexible dates - but their booking fees are very high compared to Travelocity's. So, once you find the dates you want, return to Travelocity US and book your dates!

Great info everyone. But a little low on the europian side. Everyone already knows about easyjet and ryanair, but a website of great use is whichbudget.com (also for use in the us, though not as useful.) this really helps you find any airline that specializes in flying out of your city.

And for a question for anybody, what about cheap flights from europe to america? it's never been hard to find a flight going from america to europe cheaply, but the other way always seems more expensive. that's all for now, happy travels

First let me say that I'm NOT with Icelandair nor have any relationship with them. But they do often have very cheap U.S. - Europe fairs for the airports they serve.

You can go to their site here and look at whatever page for special sales they have. This one , which unfortunately only applied to tickets bought before 12/29, had killer airfares like $330 RT MSP - LHR, which would be more like $420 - $480 after takes, but is still an unusually good deal.

I find that airline consolidators (though hard to find are often the best). I booked a ticket from Chicago to Beijing and Bangkok back to Chicago (open jaw) for just under $950 USD including all taxes and service charges. The website is www.travel-depart.com. However, it seems a bit sketchy as you can't actually buy a ticket online. But, you email what you want, or call and it works. You'll get a paper ticket in the mail and it's a good, normal ticket. I highly recommend this site for international travel.

Otherwise, I've always had luck just looking at websites in the area to get good deals. Another trip I took was Chicago - Los Angeles - Fiji - Sydney - Hamilton Island (Whitsunday Islands) - Sydney - Chicago all for $1400 USD. But, that was on Southwest, then Air Pacific, then two different domestic Australian airlines, etc.

Sometimes you find where you're going and then google airlines in the area. For instance, it's cheaper to fly across the Pacific from LAX than Chicago, so take a domestic flight to LA first.

These are my new top three faves: (I think most useful for really frequent, particularly, US-based domestic travelers):

Excellent website for finding hard to find/unadvertised frequent flyer promotions. I just found this - AFTER I had already booked three different tickets that could have yielded me an additional 15,000 bonus miles on United - had I registered beforehand!!!
Mile Maven: Frequent Flyer Promotions and Programs

FlyerTalk, especially the Miles and Points forums. There's a lot of really great information on these forums... offered up by some really serious points-jockeys...
FlyerTalk

The following website is so useful, especially for business travelers. It also has a button you can install on your google toolbar with a drop-down list of updated airport (trouble-spots) information - I find myself checking it compulsively, even when I don't have a flight scheduled:
FlightStats: Track Flight Status, Airport Delays, etc.

For traveling to or from the US to Europe I've found the best trick to be purchasing a round trip flight on something like expedia, orbitz etc. out of New York and using a local carrier to get around from there, smaller cites and vacation type destinations often have higher prices when flying from oversees. They don't fly to as many cities as some other airlines but Jet Blue has good prices from JFK or La Guardia in New York to several popular places in the states but you've got to book them on their own site ( jetblue.com ). For Southern CA they fly to Burbank and Long Beach not LAX, but Burbank is actually closer
to the city and the little Long beach airport is so cute.
Important to remember- If you book the 2 flights separately on separate carriers you will need to tranfer your own bags so leave a little time between flights

I'm surprised no one has mentioned Kelkoo yet with their lists of cheap flights. It includes Ryanair and other cheap budget airlines. You can look for hotels and hire a car at the same time as well if you fancy.

I also try to use Kayakand Skyscanner when looking for even greater comparison. What would be really useful would be a search engine that searched all the search engines...is that possible?!

http://www.flyertalk.com Has some good message boards and alot of postings about deals on various airlines.