What's the best site for booking flights?

[Rick Lee]

Kayak is losing me. They send me to cheaptickets.com, I click on "select this flight" and the price immediately goes up $200. I need to book my flight to China and am looking for the best deal out there. Any ideers?

[DasBoot]

Sometimes I find good deals directly on the airlines website. Other times, Priceline.com has pulled through.

[Gogar]

www.qixo.com for international.

I always have a hard time getting it to work on a mac, though.

[HardDrive]

I use a Kayak and Orbitz to search, but it seems like you get better deals just going directly to the airlines websites.

As we will will all be traveling by stage coach soon, this post is not really relevant.

[DasBoot]

Originally Posted by Gogar

www.qixo.com for international.

I always have a hard time getting it to work on a mac, though.

Can't get it to work on a PC, either...

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[John_AZ]

Rick Lee,

A couple of ideas:

Book a flight from LAX not PHX, usually cheaper and connect with Southwest. Allow a lot of connecting time! SW does not have an interline agreement and if late you are out of luck. SW has "DING"-daily specials if signed up.

Here is the booking engine for a lot of web sites. Click on search and sign in as guest.
http://itasoftware.com/

Look at travel section in paper. Wholesalers or consolidator. Do not book too far out and protect yourself with insurance CO that insures the wholesaler-ie TravelGuard.

Korean Air-Roundabout way but sometimes cheaper.

Sign into sites like www.flyertalk.com and see what frequent flyers do.

GL
John_AZ

[Rick Lee]

Thanks. I was only looking from LA to Shanghai, though we'd take just about anything else in China other than Hong Kong. Last night when we clicked on a few flights to book or save the itinerary, the price had gone up another $200 in those few seconds. We want to leave around Dec. 19, so I can't decide whether to buy what's out there now or hope for a special deal to pop up in another month or so. Some of the other airline sites I checked out had great deals, but not that far out.

[JavaBrewer]

I always book directly from the airline website.

Perhaps you're booking TOO far in advance? A while back I was pricing flights to Frankfurt 4 months in advance and got prices ~ $1500-$2000 flying with American and United. I actually booked the trip 14 days before departure and got the same flight on AA for $900. Last year we did some work in Korea and paid $1700 RT from LAX to Seoul. My buddy was immediately recalled and paid $1K for the RT ticket at the Korean Air counter at LAX. Departing in a couple hours...

For grins what sort of fares are you getting for the trip?

[Rick Lee]

The cheapest I've found is around $1175 RT, NS from LAX to PVG. I've found a few killer deals on airlines' websites, but then they are not clickable. Then some advertise $800-$900 and you click on them and they add $400-$500 in taxes and fees. I'd like to get it as close to $1000 as possible.

I actually have enough miles on Continental for a free RT flight, but they don't fly from here to there. So I'm probably gonna use that for one of my folks' tickets from Newark to Hong Kong, which is non-stop, and they'll buy one of our tickets.

[notfarnow]

My wife just booked tickets to China through Northwest Airlines. She saw a couple deals on Orbitz, but after leaving her stranded in Johannesburg last year, she decided to avoid them like the plague.

Bangor-> Detroit-> Tokyo -> Beijing return flights came to 997 (USD) + ~90 in fees.

That's about $400 cheaper than flying from home, so the 3hr drive to bangor is well worth it.

I guess I'd always assumed flying to Asia would be cheaper from the west coast?

[Rick Lee]

I couldn't find anything on NWA for under $1500. I'm not flying to Detroit and then Tokyo to get to China either. I don't care if it's free. Ain't doing that.

[John_AZ]

Originally Posted by Rick Lee

I couldn't find anything on NWA for under $1500. I'm not flying to Detroit and then Tokyo to get to China either. I don't care if it's free. Ain't doing that.

Airline capacity cutbacks start in Oct. Holiday flight frequent flyer seats may not/will not be available unless you double the points or blacked out entirely.

John_AZ

[p911dad]

We have had some success with www.travelzoo.com

[Rick Lee]

No joy. It just gets more depressing the more I search. Lots of great deals out there, but travel must be before I want to go. Am I way wrong by waiting another month to see if there are some Xmas deals? How busy can LA to Shanghai be around that time?

[nostatic]

When you go to Orbitz (and the others I think), you have to pull the trigger once you get your first hit. If you navigate away or check another site or wait to long it goes up in price.

xmas and deals don't go together in the industry. Kinda like trying to get a cheap flight on the wednesday before thanksgiving. I'd go with a foreign carrier - probably more luck.

[Rick Lee]

So far, China Eastern has the best deal anyway.

[rammstein]

I've always done everything. Its a moving target, check all sites at all angles. But agreed, often the direct airline sites are better.