| Vol.
I, No. 5 | Cabin
Fever / Town Meeting | Feb.
19th, 2001 |
Links
to Auto & Travel On-Line
The Best Sites for Cheap
Seats The amount of info on the web
is enormous, as anyone who's ever tried to run a search can attest to.
And, to put it all in context, best estimates say that only a fraction, maybe 20
- 40 % of what's out there is actually making its way to the search
engines.
Well ...
Here
at DownStreet, we'd like to try to help. So each issue, we post a
few links in Auto & Travel to sites that might interest you. Sometimes
the links will be related to one another ... sometimes we'll just
offer up a somewhat random sampling. Sometimes they're about Vermont
sites, sometimes not. In either case, we think we might be able to help
you find the kind of site you've been looking for.
Of
course, while we can't vouch for the fact that every link we provide will be of
interest to everyone, we do our best to filter out the noise and the
bustle. ...
We hope you enjoy the following sites as
much as we do. Links to the Best Sites for
Cheap Seats As we mentioned in this month's Travel
Here & There -- Finding
the Cheapest Seats for Your Flight -- from test runs of more than 50
internet sites, we found the three lowest-fare sites for airline tickets that,
for our money, are your best bets -- Priceline, Lowestfare, and MSN's
Expedia. What follows, then, are our reviews & ratings of the
three. ... But if you haven't read this month's Travel
Here & There, we urge you to do so first. There's some useful info
there that you'll want to look at before you go hunting for your cheap
seats. ... Priceline.com
- Name Your Own Price Not so long ago, before the
market tumble last Spring, Priceline.com was trading on the floor for more
than $100/share. As of this writing, it was ticking somewhere around
$2.75. ... You won't find savings like that at Priceline, but
you will find some, and sometimes substantial savings.
.
The
Priceline site is reasonably easy to figure out & navigate. Its
'model' for getting tickets is different from the others, however, in that
you actually make an offer of what you're willing to pay for the
tickets. Plug in departure & destination sites and dates, then
name your price, and off you go. Before you actually confirm that you
want to submit a bid at the price you entered, Priceline will scan its
database of more than 6 million tickets sold and let you know the odds of
landing tickets at the price you're offering -- for tickets with the
identical itinerary, including dates. If you want, you can up the odds
by bumping up your offer. But don't necessarily use Priceline's next
suggested price -- shown on the little graph that appears. Experiment
with different prices to see the different odds first. But be aware
that, sometimes, when we tried to plug in different offers and clicked on
the 'Calculate' button, instead of being shown the odds again, we were
re-directed to Priceline's other tool for tweaking your offer -- a list of
current airfares from Travelocity. {If you want to check current
fares, we suggest you use either of our other two links for this month --
Lowestfare.com or MSN Expedia. Both consistently returned
significantly better lowest fares than Travelocity.} ... Once you've
plugged in your info, within 15 minutes, you'll know if you scored.
.
The
real trick here is to know both what you're willing to pay and what
sort of odds you're willing to bet on. And it is a bet.
Why? Because if your offer isn't accepted, you can't go back
and simply raise your offer for the same itinerary. You'll have to
change airports, dates, or other particulars first. Nonetheless, when
we were still getting best prices over the phone of more more than
$450/ticket for a trip to Florida, later that same day, we nailed two
round-trips out of Burlington to West Palm Beach for $250 each at slightly
less than 4:1 odds. We even went back later and tried the same thing
for a rental car and ended up saving more than $6/day on the rental for a
compact, with the same odds.
Rating: ****1/2 [4-1/2 stars] Lowestfare.com This
is a straightforward site with fares every bit as good as, and sometimes
better than, MSN's Expedia site. Unlike Priceline, but like Expedia
{below}, Lowestfare offers a straight-up ticket purchase. In other
words, whatever price you see, that's the price you can pay -- right then
& there -- for the tickets you want. ... When you get to
their site, just look for the Lowestfare.com Fare Finder over on the right
hand side. ...
.
From there, you
can plug in departure & destination airports and dates, then search ...
or you can go directly to the "More detailed search" by clicking
on those words. We did the latter. And while all our phone calls
landed nothing better than that $450+ per ticket, Lowestfare found us two
seats for $265 each ... only slightly more than the price we offered and had
accepted at Priceline. {If we'd've found this site earlier, we might
have been tempted to drop our Priceline bid just a little lower.}
... The detailed search lets you plug in times as well as dates, as
well as the number of passengers and their ages. Then you're ready to
instruct it to Search for the 10 Best Fares ... the 10 Best Time Matched
Fares ... or the 5 Best Fares and 5 Best Time Matched Fares.
.
Timing
seemed to have a lot to do with the best fares we found. When we
plugged in the identical info for the flights we got through Priceline --
for mid-March -- again, the cost was only $15/ticket more ... for the
same airline and the identical flights. But when we tried to score
tickets further out -- for the kids for the 3rd week in April -- the best we
found was $100+/ticket more for a 3-legged flight to Boston & Cincinnati
before getting to West Palm Beach ... while the U.S. Airways flights --
identical except for date to the ones we landed through Priceline and found
here at Lowestfare -- were coming up at twice the cost.
... Nevertheless, while you may want to watch your timing, Lowestfare
is our top choice for buying tickets outright instead of making an offer
first.
Rating: ****1/2 [4-1/2 stars] Expedia
Travel For buying tickets outright, the Expedia
site is roughly the equal of Lowestfare, and the methods are pretty much the
same ... although Expedia's Express Search, which appears at the top of the
opening page, lets you also specify "Morning, Noon or Evening," as
well as the number of passengers, right off the bat. ...
.
If
you click on Expedia's "More flight search options," you can plug
in more detailed info, including specific times, the age(s) of the
passenger(s), and a variety of others preferences -- like ticket class,
specific airline, only direct flights. avoid most change penalties, and no
advance purchase restrictions. You can then "Build your own trip
flight by flight" {which is the recommended option "When time
really matters ..."}, or "Search by best available fares"
{"When price is your priority ..."}. ... In addition,
you can also jump from this page to ones which allow you to search for
one-way tickets, or for itineraries with multiple legs.
.
For
those of you interested in the lowest fare, we didn't find a lot at Expedia
to lift above Lowestfare.com. But for those who want more options and
customization for an itinerary that isn't based always or only on the lowest
fare, then Expedia is definitely worth a visit.
Rating: ****1/2 [4-1/2
stars]
. *******
******* If you know of any links
that you think are worthwhile, why not send them along to ...
links@downstreetmagazine.com
... If we agree, we'll be happy to include
them in an upcoming issue to pass the word along. ...
Thanks. *******
******* .
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