Whats the Best Way to Make Flight Arrangements?
Mates,
As we enter OT season I figured this might be a question that the many uber-smart and experienced minds on the board could weigh in on. I am an infrequent flyer these days, taking maybe one flight every couple of years at most. I am working on booking a flight for oldest son and I for a father-son trip and I am have this feeling that I am missing 'the best way' to book it. I have googled flights and get a list of flights. I have contacted a travel agent for help, and candidly, they didn't seem to come up with anything that's too helpful. I would welcome your suggestions on the best way to find and book flight reservations.
My question is simple: What is the best way to book flights, what website, travel agent, airline, whatever is the best way to figure this out?
Thank you for you help. Hoping others on the board benefit from the sharing of the collective wisdom.
XM
Good comeback XM
April 17th, 2018 at 11:01 PM ^
April 17th, 2018 at 11:08 PM ^
took the daughters last year on an adventure and am grateful for the time i spent with them. i am planning on taking all the boys at one time or another on a big trip, too, but this oldest son will be turning 18 and going off to college before i know it, and i figure i'd better take the time before its too late. i have more years for all of the younger boys, but not this one.
I myself am a huge fan of invectives but typically don't expect them incoming from the airlines as opposed from me when I find a flight was delayed/cancelled.
April 19th, 2018 at 10:52 AM ^
April 17th, 2018 at 11:04 PM ^
April 17th, 2018 at 11:13 PM ^
but this trip would take close to a week in each direction if we're driving. years ago i took a couple of the middle children fly-fishing in montana and we had a gas. have taken a couple of family trips out west too, in our monster-van. the family travels well thanks to mgowife and her preparation of the all the details. they can go up to about 800 miles in a day and its not a problem. i should add that i think i missed my calling in life: i was born to be a truck driver. i'm an idiot savant, and one thing i can do is drive for many hours without getting tired or bored, just drive....
April 18th, 2018 at 11:41 AM ^
my game!
April 18th, 2018 at 11:25 AM ^
you sound like an awesome dad...good on you for driving, i can only last 3 hrs max
April 18th, 2018 at 12:06 PM ^
dad and husband. credit to mgowife, she is the bomb. the kids are easy to be with, and that includes road trips. it is not uncommon at certain points of any given trip to have the music turned way up and everybody 'dancing' (while seat belted) to a number of favorite songs. and books. books are big time in our house. lots of reading while driving.
Eyes on the road Melanin!
but as the old doors song goes, 'keep your eyes on the road and your hands upon the wheel'
Going to the roadhouse? Gonna have a real... good time.
April 17th, 2018 at 11:09 PM ^
April 18th, 2018 at 12:34 AM ^
I second Google flights. I try to get all my friends and family to use it when they're searching for the best deals.
I briefly skimmed through this video but it seems to highlight most of what I tell friends & family about Google flights: https://youtu.be/0FbGfaUE8Ic
For background, Google purchased a big airfare search / pricing system called ITA back in 2010. I think ITA was the industry standard so it gave Google a nice leg up and ties in perfectly with their overall search philosphy.
Google flights has a nice visual layout and also gives you quick access to see how the price changes based on nearby airports or different dates.
You can do that already but it's usually done per airline. With Google flights you can see the price differences for multiple airlines at once instead of just one.
You can also do broad searches like DTW to California/Texas/Asia/Europe/etc. and it'll show you prices for multiple cities in that geographical location.
You might also find it useful to look at your trip in one-way chunks. For example, it may be more economical to purchase the flight down on Delta and the flight back on United versus a roundtrip ticket on one airline.
Note: 'll add the only concern with flying multiple airlines is if you're trying to do connecting flights. If you have connections you should probably stick with one airline so they can adjust later portions of your flight if for some reason your first flight gets delayed.
Love the extremely intuitive and fast UI. Love the way they plot flight prices ("price graph") over periods of time so you can ID what's the best day to leave/return. Even better, since I live near multiple airports and often want to fly to locations with multiple airports, it lets me search for the best flight based on all the available combinations. I've found it to be way more seamless than expedia, hipmunk, kayak, etc.
April 18th, 2018 at 10:30 AM ^
Since my family travel is flexible, the airfare map is great if our vacation criteria is "some place warm". It opens a lot of great ideas that we hadn't thought of - maybe I'm just more of a visual person and like looking at maps anyway. But you can see so many alternatives. For example, if you are going to Europe, you might find one German city is half the price to fly to than another.
Since my "local" airports are about 2 hours away, I find I can drive 3-4 hours and fly from NYC, Montreal or Philadelphia for a lot cheaper than Syracuse or Albany. A trip to Hawaii from Syracuse was $959 out of SYR but $450 round trip from Montreal.
April 18th, 2018 at 12:24 PM ^
I still use ITA - for personal and busines. I used to travel weekly so this site was like magic. I book direct - but this site is such a massive help. It's actually like a math problem sometimes and playing with this site can really save you some money.
https://matrix.itasoftware.com/#search:research=AUSBNA
Word. I've never found Kayak to be very helpful in my experience.
April 17th, 2018 at 11:14 PM ^
April 17th, 2018 at 11:16 PM ^
didn't you, mate?
hey, how come all you koalas have chlymadia? is your whole community disreputable soundrels? shame.
April 18th, 2018 at 12:09 AM ^
No 'U' :D
Queensland And Northern Territory Air Service
QANTAS
Now we just need a clip of Dustin Hoffman refusing to fly anyone else... :)
April 17th, 2018 at 11:16 PM ^
https://matrix.itasoftware.com
April 17th, 2018 at 11:17 PM ^
April 17th, 2018 at 11:19 PM ^
will try this too.
April 18th, 2018 at 12:32 PM ^
I got here late - but agree with everyone who mentioned ITA. I used to fly weekly and this site was a lifesaver. Some of the key funtions are working with the 'one way' or 'multi city' options. I reccommend selecting the 'one way' option to maximize your savings - specifically if you are not loyal to any particular airline. Also, once you select your airport - there is this great option to slect all 'nearby' airports - from 25 miles away up to 2,000 miles away. Sometimes you can get a cheaper flight by booking a flight using your destination city as a layover stop. You can just get off at your destination city without having to get back on. If you are going to do this - you need to book one way flights (otherwise your roundtrip ticket will get cancelled). Again - this site is a lot of fun and there is a lot you can do here.
April 18th, 2018 at 12:37 PM ^
Side note: in 2013 I was flying back to NYC from the west coast. I had a stop in Dallas. I got off the plane, told the crew I wasn't feeling well, they said I could take a later flight. I got a rental car, drove to Jerry World - on the way, I stopped at McDonalds for free wifi to hook up to Stubhub and got a ticket to the Michigan/Florida basketball game for $40 - 18th row. After that spectacular game, I drove back to DFW and got on the last flight of the day back home. That was great and this ITA site really helped me plan that trip successfully.
This is much riskier than you're laying it out to be and defintiely not something I'd recommend for an inexperienced traveler. The problem is, suppose you're trying to get to DFW, so you book a flight through DFW to AUS. You do not have a ticket to DFW, and the airline has no particular responsibility to get you there. The airline (AA, in this case) is free to route you via ORD, PHL, CLT, LAX, etc. You can ask them to put you back on the DFW flight ("I was planning to meet someone at the airport"), but there's no guarantee that there's a seat available.
Furthermore, if you decide to do this, you cannot check luggage, as there's no way to retrieve it at your transfer point.
And, finaly, this is against the airlines' contracts of carriage. If you do it once, it's unlikely to be a problem. If you make a habit of it, you can expect to be noticed and punished (loss of frequent flier miles / status, a big bill for the actual cost of transportation provided -- even a ban from flying that airline in the future).
I'm a big fan of ITA Matrix, but I'm not a big fan of Hidden-City Ticketing; for me, the risk isn't worth it.
Those chances are so small that you would get rerouted because there are people on that same flight that have DFW as their destination. It will stop at DFW. I've been on flights that have emergency landings - but I've never been on a flight that skipped a stop. Anything is possible with bad weather though - but the chances of getting a stop skipped are so small!
And you are correct - do NOT check luggage if you are doing this! LOL
I am not encouraging anyone to do this on every flight - in fact - you are not going to save money doing this frequently, but there are rare instances in certain parts of the country where you can save hundreds of dollars. And with this site, you can really have fun playing around with options - especially the nearby airport option. I've flown to airports 1-2 hours from my destination and saved hundreds of dollars.
I'm not talking about diversions -- I agree with you on that. If you get onto the flight to DFW, you'll get to DFW eventually. :)
The problem comes up when the flight to DFW is cancelled or delayed. I've been rerouted several times through a different connecting city due to a problem on the outbound leg that would have caused me to miss my connection. (The airlines can also do it apropros of nothing, but that's very rare).
April 17th, 2018 at 11:25 PM ^
is the goal, good suggestions here thus far. Third party sites tend to favor certain airlines though so check Travelocity, Expedia, Priceline, etc. and the airline website too. Longtime airline employee and I have lots of irrelevant stories to tell. Pay ahead for any upgrades you are seeking if that's important.
April 17th, 2018 at 11:26 PM ^
My wife is really good at doing this. She says Wednesday is usually when you find cheaper flights and booking directly from the airlines usually is best. Deals can always be found radomly but flying out homebase hubs usually means a cheaper flight on that airline. Good luck.
April 17th, 2018 at 11:31 PM ^
skiplagged.com
April 17th, 2018 at 11:46 PM ^
skiplagged is a site intended for experts. You can get yourself into trouble if you don't know what you're doing, as they will sometimes suggest things that have massive side-effects involving irregular operations (bad weather) or -- especially -- baggage.
April 17th, 2018 at 11:45 PM ^
April 17th, 2018 at 11:49 PM ^
April 17th, 2018 at 11:53 PM ^
April 17th, 2018 at 11:54 PM ^
April 18th, 2018 at 12:07 AM ^
There are a few things to think about here. First of all, what's most important to you? Price. comfort, or convenience? There are obviously going to be trade-offs involved.
There have been lots of good suggestions on this thread, but one thing I can't emphasize enough: there is no magic bullet. There is no single best time to buy airfare -- if there were, airlines would immediately change their pricing algorithms to eliminate it. In general, airfare is seasonal; summer is more expensive than winter for most destinations, and Tuesday, Wednesday, and Saturday are normally the cheapest travel days.
What's far more important, though, is flexibility. The more dates, airports, and airlines you can consider, the better. Maybe you're thinking of going to Rocky Mountain National Park. I'm not sure exactly where you're located, but I gather it's somewhere north of Midland in the LP. Several of the northern Michigan airports only have Delta service, which drives the price up due to lack of competition. If you can make the drive to Traverse City, Bay City, Grand Rapids, or Lansing, you'll get more choices. At your destination, you might find that it's cheaper to fly into Colorado Springs than Denver, so check both. That's one of the things that Google Flights or matrix.itasoftware.com are really good at -- letting you plug in multiple airports to see what comes up.
Southwest Airlines is not included in those search results -- they fly from Grand Rapids, Flint, and Detroit. You'll need to search their website separately to get their fares. They are often a good deal for families, as they include two pieces of checked luggage for free with each ticket.
The other piece of advice I'd give you is to make sure you've included all costs -- baggage, food, seat selection, parking, etc. Some airlines will charge you extra for using a credit card to book or for failing to check in online (I'm looking at you, Allegiant). They count on passengers being swayed by the low fare they offer and then making it up on the incidentals. That goes beyond the flight, BTW -- if you plan to rent a car at your destination, and you have a couple of possible destination airports, it might be worth an extra $20 per ticket on the flight to save $15 per day on the rental car.
Oh, that reminds me -- if you're tall and/or wide, make sure you pay attention to the seat sizing information. Airlines are offering less and less space between seats -- unless you're willing to cough up extra cash. If that's important to you, make sure you include those costs in your calculation.
Hope this helps. Have a great trip. :)
April 18th, 2018 at 12:13 AM ^
April 18th, 2018 at 12:13 AM ^
April 18th, 2018 at 12:15 AM ^
None of those carriers are particularly strong in the midwest. I'm guessing you do a lot of travel up and down the coasts or cross-country.
They're worth looking into if they happen to fly where XM is trying to go, though. :)
April 18th, 2018 at 12:16 AM ^
April 18th, 2018 at 10:23 AM ^
FWIW, I just flew on a basic economy ticket on Delta on Monday and Tuesday this week (purchased for me, I had no say). There was no constraint from using the overhead bin, aside from the potential that it would be full since you board in the newly created Zone 4. Anyone whose bag didn't fit was checked free of charge. Also, it was a regional jet with a 2-2 seat map, so there was no chance in ending up in the middle seat. If you're flying with someone, though, I imagine you'd face a near certainty of being separated on the plane.
I can't say my experience with Basic Economy has been consistent. Some flights are no problem (consistent with your experience), and it has bit me in the ass a time or two (on United i think). Moral - read the fine print when you book it, each airline is a little different.
April 18th, 2018 at 12:34 AM ^
Others have posted about days of the week to book flights. You could also find cheaper fares if you stay over a Saturday night during a trip. It's another way the airlines sticks it to the business traveler who don't like to travel over weekends.
After you book, keep checking the fares. If the fares have dropped, the airline often will credit you the difference in fares.
Delta and Alaska have 20 minute checked baggage guarantee. As soon as the plane is deboarding, check your clock. If the checked bags don't arrive at luggage claim in 20 minutes, Alaska will give you a $25 certificate and Delta will give you 2,500 miles.
April 18th, 2018 at 12:39 AM ^
Seconding the reco for Skyscanner as it's a great app for searching conveniently. Matrix is probably the best but if you want to take a glance at current state of things you can easily peek at the Skyscanner app every now.
If you're just on the look out for great deals on trips (and not married to location), The Flight Deal has some specials I don't always see everywhere else. It's a bit more for the spontaneous traveler and only really useful near major airports; more of an "I want to go somewhere cool in July and I'm flexible on where/open to ideas" type service. This doesn't sound like your trip but thought I'd toss it in while we're on the topic.
Travel agents are only useful if you just don't want to spend time looking and/or want to hang out with some Russian spies.