Vol. II, No. 3: 2. Travel Here + There: How Cheap Are Airline Seats Now?

While there's lots of talk about folks foregoing flying to travel by car these days, for some, the question is still how to get there by plane. And with that comes the inevitable question of what it will cost.

In order to get some some sense of if and how much airline travel costs have changed in the wake of cutbacks and reductions in service, DownStreet once again went to on-line resources to find the answer. {You may also want to check out a prior piece we did last spring called, Finding the Cheapest Seats for Your Flight, which included links to The Best Sites for Cheap Seats.}

Given the inevitable delays these days because of increased airport security, we thought we'd limit our search to itineraries that would get you to Florida or California. The fact is, though, that long before the events of September 11th, flying between Burlington and New York, for example, is a trip that might better be made by car if you want to save both time and money. A couple of summers back, on a business trip, we took a flight from Newark to Burlington and, with the congestion and delays, we could have taken a rental car not only for less money, but made it back in less time. So, add to that the couple of hours extra now required at check-in and you may want to think more than twice about flying anywhere you can drive to in less than six hours.

In that light, we checked both LowestFare.com and MSN's Expedia. {We omitted the third of the best cheap seat sites we cited in our previous article -- Priceline.com -- which will only cough up prices for those willing to commit to whatever they find on your behalf. As usual, we're not planning on going anywhere over the holidays.} We went with the default holiday schedule that came up -- departing on December 22nd and returning on December 29th. We ran the queries on December 1st, so we didn't get that 21-day window that sometimes means cheaper fares. But given some of the prices we saw to Palm Beach, we also decided to add London to the mix just out of curiosity. Finally, we started by checking departures/connections from Burlington only, but, likewise out of curiosity, we also added departures from Montreal's Dorval, Logan in Boston, and Newark, to see what the differences might be, but for the Palm Beach itnierary only.

Of course, holiday travel is always more expensive. But here are the results for the cheapest seats we found. ...

Cheap Seats? Cheapest Seats Found on December 1st for Departure on Dec. 22nd, Return on Dec. 29th
Depart	To	Cost Each*	Airline	Source
Burlington	Palm Beach	$604	U.S. Airways	LowestFare
Burlington	Palm Beach	$767	Delta	MSN/Expedia
Montreal	Palm Beach	$524	Delta	MSN/Expedia
Montreal	Palm Beach	$887	Delta	LowestFare
Boston	Palm Beach	$693	Delta	MSN/Expedia
Boston	Palm Beach	$773	Delta	LowestFare
Newark	Palm Beach	$529	Delta	MSN/Expedia
Newark	Palm Beach	$819	Delta	LowestFare
Burlington	Los Angeles	$451	U.S. Airways	MSN/Expedia
Burlington	Los Angeles	$463	U.S. Airways	LowestFare
Burlington	London	$884	USAir/BritAir	MSN/Expedia
Burlington	London	$1024	United	LowestFare
* Prices are rounded up to the nearest whole dollar.

None of this means that these will be the prices you'll pay. They're simply the fares we found when we did our research. And each of them was based on the same departure and return dates. If your itinerary or your destination changes from the ones we researched, then the fares will also change.

Also, in general, the longer you wait before booking, the greater the chances that a) you'll either find cheaper seats than we did, especially at a last-minute booking gamble like PriceLine.com ... or b), given the holiday rush, you'll find find that there are no seats left.

Either way, if you're set on traveling by plane for your holiday, then we definitely suggest you check out the sites and prices. Given the current climate, there may well be some good deals to be found ... even for the holiday rush.

If you would like to submit something for our Travel Here & There feature, or if you simply would like to suggest something you think we ought to cover, e-mail us at ... autotravel@downstreetmagazine.com.