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how to find Cheap Airfares |
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by Michael Bluejay |
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Kayak |
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The best site for domestic (U.S.) flights. Searches a ton of sites (including Orbitz & CheapTickets), and has more features than anyone. Hands-down the best overall engine for U.S. flights. The only downsides are: (1) Their Flexible Dates feature requires registration, (2) Flexible Dates searches only +/- 3 days from whatever date you enter, (3) It sometimes doesn't find the best price for international fares. Kayak is another flavor of SideStep, which is basically the same thing. |
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Gives the best fares for foreign flights (starting or ending outside the U.S), as it claims to search more sites than anyone, including tons of tiny international carriers. But its failure to show total trip duration is a major shortcoming. |
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Good site for foreign flights, as they search a number of tiny international carriers that Kayak might miss, especially in Europe. Good alternative to Mobissimo for international fares if you want to see the total trip length. Their price calendar is neat when it works, but in our experience it usually doesn't. |
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cumbersome |
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Kayak is usually better. Travelocity consistently returned worse prices than Kayak in our sample searches (except on one fare from S.F. to Tokyo), and Travelocity's features are lame compared to Kayak's anyway. Travelocity does one thing better: Its Flexible Dates search is more powerful. |
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Kayak searches Orbitz automatically, so there's no reason to search use Orbitz separately. Also, Orbitz charges a booking fee of up to $12. |
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Sometimes good for last-minute fares that the other sites don't show, but doesn't offer one-way or multi-city fares. |
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An individual airline, not a search engine, but we're listing them separately because the search engines above don't include their flights, and because their fares are often cheaper than what you can find in those engines. |
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The search engine offerings change quickly. When I first started this website, what are now the top three search engines didn't even exist. And one of my early top picks, Qixo, has given up and thrown in the towel. So here's the current rundown of the best sites. If you don't see your favorite listed here, it's probably because it's no better than the ones I do list. (But if you think yours deserves to be listed, feel free to drop me a line to let me know.)
Kayak (aka SideStep). Kayak is easily our favorite, because it searches tons of sites to find the best fares, and has lots of features that make it truly easy to use. Really, they set the standard to which all other airfare engines should aspire (and they can quote us on that). In fact I don't have space to list everything that's brilliant about them, but here are the most important:
- They search Orbitz, so there's no need to search Orbitz separately.
- Live controls let you filter the results quickly (by price, # of stops, departure/arrival time, trip duration, layover duration, and more).
- You can also sort the results by price, airline, departure or arrival time, or number of stops.
- Shows abbreviated listings by default so you can see more results at once, but one click instantly expands any listing (without having to reload the page).
- For each result an icon lets you easily print it, email it, save it to Favorites, or even delete it if you've decided against it and don't care to see it cluttering up your screen any more.
- One click on "Matrix View" displays a nice summary table, showing fares by number of stops and which airline.
- One click on "See airline fees" gives a new window showing baggage allowances and fees, as well as any charges for meals, pets, and other special services.
- Clicks on any result goes to a new window, keeping your search results intact.
- Icons for results show you when the connect time is less than 45 mins, when a flight is nearly sold out, or when it's less than 75% on-time.
- Shows prices in any currency (requires free
registration, and they don't share your address).
Kayak's only downside is that it sometimes doesn't show the best fares for international flights. For those you should use Mobissimo or Momondo, below. Also, remember that no engine searches Southwest Airlines (because Southwest won't pay the referral fee), so it always pays to check Southwest separately.
Mobissimo finds the best fares for international flights (starting or ending outside the U.S), as it claims to search more sites than anyone, and we believe them. They certainly did well in our sample tests. But their failure to show total trip duration is a major shortcoming. If that feature is important to you, try Momondo.
Momondo is similar to Mobissimo, searching a ton of tiny carriers across the globe which can give you an edge in finding fares outside the U.S. They don't appear to search quite as many fares as Mobissimo, so there's a chance you won't get quite as good a deal (though in our limited tests, Momondo did just as well as Mobissimo). One thing we like about Momondo is that it shows you the total trip duration in hours -- something lacking at Mobissimo.
Travelocity. Oh, how they've fallen. Travelocity pioneered the important feature of Flexible Dates, but after that they stood still and the other sites have outpaced them. Today Travelocity rarely finds better fares and it's woefully lacking in features, like live filtering. Kayak, Mobissimo, and Momondo are usually better, but Travelocity still scores on one feature: Its Flexible Dates search is still the best around, since it's the most open-ended. If your travel dates aren't set in stone then it could be worth a try. Of course, since Kayak lets you launch a Travelocity search in a new window, there's really no reason to ever go to Travelocity first.Orbitz. Orbitz has been eclipsed by Kayak, since Kayak includes results from Orbitz. There's no reason I can think of to search Orbitz separately.
Hotwire. When there are unsold seats on a flight airlines will offer them at a substantial discount at the last minute (a couple of days to a week before the flight leaves). You have to be flexible with your itinerary, but if that's you, you can score amazing cheap airfare this way. Many search engines don't have access to these special, suddenly-discounted flights, but Hotwire does, so Hotwire can often find you a much better deal than the others. (We got Texas to California RT airfare at the last minute for only $250 with only one connection; this route was being sold for at least $600 everywhere else, including Travelocity. We also got Baton Rouge to Miami one-way for just $152 with only four days' advance purchase.)
There are lots of other websites, but we don't list them all because we're focusing on quality, not quantity. If you know of a really good site that's better than the ones listed above (and can tell us why), feel free to let us know about it.
Regardless of which site you use, make sure you check out our Tips for getting cheapest airfares.
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Find
which travel days are cheapest |
If you liked my guide to Cheap Airfare, you might like some of my other sites:
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Which website to use |
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If your travel dates are flexible: |
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For airfares at the last minute |
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For all other U.S. flights: |
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For international flights: |
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Summarized Tips for getting the cheapest airfare |
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Be flexible with your travel dates (click "flexible dates" at Travelocity, and see our flexible dates tips). |
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Book at least 2-3 weeks in advance, 30 days for intl. flights. |
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Fly mid-week if you can. |
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Check fares at nearby airports (e.g., Newark, NJ instead of NYC). Most search engines have a checkbox to do this automatically. |
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Check roundtrip fares even if you're traveling one-way. Round-trips are often cheaper, for some strange reason. |
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Travel on Thanksgiving Day itself instead of the day before Thanksgiving. |
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After Thanksgiving, return on Friday, Saturday or Monday instead of Sunday. |
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Fly on Christmas Day itself instead of the days before Christmas. |
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If you're traveling to more than one city, use the engine's special Multi-City search. |
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Use the best website for your particular situation. See our complete tips. |
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how to find Cheap Airfares |
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by Michael Bluejay |
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