BootsnAll Travel Community

How does everyone feel about Priceline, name your own price thing. I usually just cough up and pay whatever it costs to fly but this time, going to Ireland, I want more playing money. I would rather not have 5 stops to get there though.

Should I try priceline? I'm not so good at this airfare hunting thing.

Help

I have used it for hotel rooms, but I haven't ever had much luck with using it for air tix. I am a fan of Travelocity, myself.

What is your itinerary? Let's (collectively) see if we can find you a low ticket price.

My one experience with Priceline was bad. I even ended up eating the ticket. Arg. This was my fault though, for the most part.

I was just grabbing a flight from Seattle to LA. This is virtually a "shuttle" in my mind, as there are numerous non-stops throughout the day between the two cities on various carriers. I plugged in my price and hit "buy".

They found me a ticket. But I was routed through Dallas or something with a big layover. So instead of a little 1 1/2 hour flight, it would have taken me all day to get there.

My mistake. Never occured to me they would do that. (Do they still not tell you the details of what you're buying before you have to commit? This was several years ago.)

Braslvr Tip #1

When is a cheaper airfare not really cheaper?

Lets say for example you want to fly USA to Bangkok. You find airfares on United and Northwest for $850. You also find fares at $670-775 on China Air, or EVA, etc.

Depending on your origin in the US, you could earn ~20,000 miles for this flight. 25K gets you a free ticket anywhere in continental US or Canada, so you're almost there. In fact, if you charged your airfare and the rest of your trip on your mileage earning credit card, you could be there! Depending on where and when you are flying, that ticket could easily be worth $500 or more.

So, which would you choose?

Also, if you flew just 5K more with the same airline or alliance in the same year, you would have a status level for the remainder of that year, and all next year. On UA, you would start eaning a 25% mileage bonus on all your flights, and would have access to their E+ seating with extra legroom.

If you managed to fly a total of 50K in one year, you would have gold status and earn a 100% mileage bonus on all your flights, have free access to VIP lounges internationally, AND start accumulating domestic upgrade certificates as well.

Important note:
Many times tickets bought through consolidators do not earn miles even though they are booked on UA or other major carriers. You need to ask, and get it in writing. Priceline tickets never earn miles.

This is a handy site if you're trying to plan a route with a One World Alliance RTW ticket. Also handy if you're trying to find mileage runs from any of the companies in the alliance (British Airways, American Airlines, Qantas, etc.)

http://jph.bytestacker.com/award.htm

I've thrown away tickets several times and no one cared. Then again, I've already paid for the return flight as they look at it, so why should they care??

Sometimes two way tickets are cheaper than one-way. Theres another advantage to throwing away tickets. When you land in an airport in England, they may not give you the third degree for using a one way ticket.

If you are looking for flights within Europe www.skyscanner.net is a good reference point.

I'm copying and pasting from a post by crazyal that appeared today in the Europe forum here because there's good info in it, especially if you're a U.S.A.-based traveler. Hope that's okay to do and thanks crazyal.

crazyal says:

"The pricing for plane tickets usually follows a cycle in the U.S. Basicly if the kids are out of school the prices go up! Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years you usually find spikes of higher prices. Flights to Asia may find a spike up for the Chinese New Years.

Closer you get to the summer graduation/school vacations the prices rise, they reach a peak and gradually decline a little closer to September (when the kids go back to school!)

Occasionally airlines find themselves with flights that have empty seats, they will lower the prices (last minute deals) to fill those seats - you may be the lucky guy who gets the cheap seat.

Sometimes after a big plane crash somewhere in the world, something that gets a lot of publicity, the airlines get more cancellations. Sometimes whole tour groups get wet feet and bail out of their reservations. Seats open up and there are more "last minute deals!"

Prices also go up because of the cost of fuel and security procedures that are in place now. What I hate is when you see a good price for a flight and the "small print" say DOES NOT INCLUDE TAXES AND SURCHARGES! Not all companies have the same increase, I don't understand it some increases are small and some are quite a bit more. When you compare prices you have to compare the WHOLE price with all the add-ons.

I find that the staff that answers the telephones (NWA, Delta, and UA) are more friendly late at night just after midnight. I don't know if they have more time looking for better deals and more convenient departure times - to me they just seem more helpful and friendly at that time.

When you book a flight don't fall in love with a particular departure date - BE FLEXIBLE - check the prices a few days before and a few days after your desired date for a cheaper price. Usually flights departing on Friday, weekends and holidays may cost more than the other days of the week. If you have a smaller airport not too far from your house - check their prices too. For me sometimes flying out of Providence RI is over $100 cheaper than the same airline going to the same destination flying out of Boston! (I was going to SFO.) Checking the prices from different airports is worth a looksee but it's no guarantee of a lower price.

I booked a flight from Boston to Manila, P.I. yesterday with the right to cancel up to midnight tonight. (Leaving June 7.) I checked that same flight today and it was around $500 more. I was mulling over the idea of not taking the flight because it was much higher than last year, but a $500 difference in cost convinced me to keep what I had!

I fly a lot and I only fly on airlines that I can use the frequent flyer miles on! Sometimes I do pay an extra $30 to $50 more for a flight from a particular airline that I want. BUT the little extra benefits pay off later on for me. I like my gold cards, they give me free upgrades, preferential seating, first on the plane (when all the overhead bins are still empty,) and bonuse miles for later on. During the Christmas and New Years holidays when the prices are really high going overseas - I fly for free using my miles that I got on the cheaper flights! Works for me!

Al


***********************
Travel the world now before you get too old to do it!

Absolutely! All great info, and I cannot emphasize enough the part about paying a little more to stick with your airline/alliance. It will pay HUGE dividends in the long run.

Crazyal's info seems to always be incredibly spot-on.

This site shows you the best/worst/"think about it" seats on the aircraft you're flying on.

Seat Guru

Ideal to have it open while you're making your reservation, but you can also call the airline & try changing your seats if you're already booked.

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.