Is Kayak.com the first place you look for cheap flights?

Just in the midst of getting a few approx prices for some flights we will likely be taking for our upcoming RTW....now I have been checking farecompare.com, cheapoair.com, and a few others...I know that it generally pays to look at a few of these discount flight sites, but what is the first site you usually try, or better worded, which site more often than not, finds you the flight you are looking for (i.e. the cheap one)?

Thanks!

kayak and fly.com is what i mostly use

flightnetwork & cheapoair are pretty good but lots of times American Airlines, in NA/CA or Air Asia when in Asia will offer just as good prices

Yes. I usually do a basic search on Kayak, see who's offering the cheapest or most direct flights then go to their website.

I've found a lot of times that flights are even cheaper from the airline website itself.

I usually take a look at whichbudget to see if there's any oddball airlines I haven't thought of, and then I check ITA Software. Kayak isn't great for people looking to buy tickets without a US credit card + address, as some of the sites they search won't accept out-of-country mailing addresses, and I don't find them to be much use at route finding. I really like ITA's nearby airports feature, which offers a lot of detailed control.

Yeah, I usually start with Kayak because of their flexible date search. Another site that I've recently become aware of is www.hipmunk.com They give you some interesting options for sorting results.

I think most of the time kayak.com and whichbudget.com get most of them, though skyscanner.com is worth a look as well. In all these cases however I head to the airline's website itself instead of clicking through the interim website as often sites will list tickets as more expensive than they really are (I lived in a Continental hub city and they routinely tack on an extra $20 just for using kayak- thanks guys!).

If you are under 26/a student/ a teacher, however, it is really worth your while to do a search on studentuniverse.com or statravel.com particularly if you're planning well in advance. I flew to Bangkok on less than $600 through STA Travel two years back, and to Nairobi for about that a few months back, both from the States.

Found Skyscanner to be very good:
http://www.skyscanner.net/

If given the same perameters, most search engines will find the same result. But I find Skyscanner SOOOOO much better. You have the freedom to search a country, not just a city. Plus you can scan an entire month to find the best days to fly. Not to mention, a quick test (Istanbul-Casablanca) came up $1 cheaper on Skyscanner.

Anyone have an explanation? I just checked a flight YYZ-BKK for May 3, 2011.

Sky scanner was $866 on Aero Svit

Cheapo air was $560 on Aero Svit

busman7 wrote:Anyone have an explanation? I just checked a flight YYZ-BKK for May 3, 2011.

Sky scanner was $866 on Aero Svit

Cheapo air was $560 on Aero Svit

Because the CheapOAir price doesn't include taxes. If you click on "Book" you'll see that the taxes are $300, making it virtually equivalent to the Skyscanner price.

I usually find & buy my airfare on vayama.com

BootsnAll's Cheap Ticket Links isn't a bad place to start either. You can search most of the major OTA's with one search and we also have links to most of the sites listed here so you can go to those directly as well.

Full disclosure, you will be helping out BnA by using that site, but there are no extra fees for doing so.

EMH wrote:

busman7 wrote:Anyone have an explanation? I just checked a flight YYZ-BKK for May 3, 2011.

Sky scanner was $866 on Aero Svit

Cheapo air was $560 on Aero Svit

Because the CheapOAir price doesn't include taxes. If you click on "Book" you'll see that the taxes are $300, making it virtually equivalent to the Skyscanner price.

Thanks, as I was just guesstimating the travel date I didn't go to book

busman7 wrote:

EMH wrote:

busman7 wrote:Anyone have an explanation? I just checked a flight YYZ-BKK for May 3, 2011.

Sky scanner was $866 on Aero Svit

Cheapo air was $560 on Aero Svit

Because the CheapOAir price doesn't include taxes. If you click on "Book" you'll see that the taxes are $300, making it virtually equivalent to the Skyscanner price.

Thanks, as I was just guesstimating the travel date I didn't go to book

Ah and here I thought you chose May 3rd cause it's my birthday and you wanted to give me a present for saying nice things about San Salvador.