5 Great Websites For Scoring Cheap Airfare
Lifehacker recently discussed their five best travel sites for cheap tickets — highlighting Kayak, Yapta, Live Search Farecast, Priceline, and Sidestep. I was surprised when I saw the list — all are great search engines, but all do virtually the same thing, returning virtually the same results.
These search engines are useful tools, but they are only one of many types of resources on the internet to save money on airfare. Nine times out of ten, you’re likely to find the same itinerary return the same price at all of these sites. The key is to have the knowledge to know where and when to look, and these sites below are the ones that help me do just that:
Best For Specific Dates: ITA Software Search
ITA Software’s QPX Fare Shopping Engine (http://matrix.itasoftware.com/) is the ultimate airfare search tool for geeks (it even has its own manual!), offering unparalleled flexibility. This is a search engine, not a booking site - so once you find an itinerary, you cannot book it with them; you must go to another other travel site like Orbitz.
Why bother with ITA then? They’ll help your zero in on combinations you wouldn’t have otherwise found; once you know what you’re looking for, it is easy to find it on other sites. Consider the following features:
- Clean, simple interface — it is quick and light
- Several ways to view results, including matrix view, choosing whole trips, or choosing them flight-by-flight. There are even graphical options available for those so inclined.
- They even provide a bunch of money-saving tips for their search engine.
But, by far, the best reason is their powerful search options. They explain it all on their Route Language help page, but just to give you a taste:
- Not sure which airport you want to leave from? Enter multiple airports separated by semicolons — For example, “BOS;PVD;BDL” tells it to search Boston, Providence, and Hartford. Three searches in one!
- Not sure where you want to go? Try the same thing for your destination. For example, “LHR;DUB;BRU;CDG” will have it search London, Dublin, Brussels, and Paris — four searches in one!
- Not a big fan of US Airways for your trip from Philadelphia? — “Philadelphia:: ~US” tells it to exclude all US Airways flights
- Big fan of United or American? — “ORD::AA,UA” tells it to only search flights on American (AA) or United (UA) for your flight from Chicago.
ITA can be confusing at first — but once you get the hang of it, it can be great for finding the best and cheapest options.
Best For The Big Picture: FareCompare.com
Farecompare.com (http://www.farecompare.com/) - One of the keys to scoring great airfare is recognizing that airfare rules vary by airline and fares may only be valid on certain days of the week, for certain lengths of time, for certain airports, for certain flight numbers, with different advance purchase requirements, and more. Having this information can make it much easier to locate those cheap flights.
Farecompare.com has mastered the airfare analysis game — they make it easy to quickly get the “big picture” — information on what each airline is offering on any given route. Every day they analyze the raw fare updates from the airlines, often providing information hours before it is actually bookable (sign-up for email alerts to get automatic updates on chosen routes). Farecompare.com provides the knowledge necessary to find the cheapest flights out there, and is usually my first stop to try to get a feel for airfare options.
Their CEO Rick Seaney also runs a great blog on airfare and the airline industry that is worth checking out.
Best For Cheap Europe Flights: Skyscanner.net
Skyscanner.net (http://www.skyscanner.net/) - Love them or hate them, low cost carriers like Ryanair and Easyjet make it extremely affordable to hop around European cities. The challenge for me has always been (1) figuring out what low cost carriers fly a certain route and (2) which airline is cheapest. Skyscanner has both of these bases covered; simply give it a departure and arrival city, and travel dates, and it will return the prices of all the discount carriers on that route — as well as some nifty features like currency conversion. Skyscanner tops it all off with a clean and impressive website, making it a great tool for the budget-conscious Europe traveler.
Best For Last Minute Travel: LastMinute.com
LastMinute.com (http://www.lastminute.com/) - Looking for a weekend getaway? Buying airfare directly from the airline can get expensive close to departure — consider LastMinute.com for weekend getaways deals. The amazing thing is that LastMinute.com’s Flight+Hotel combination deals or Flight+Car combination deals often cost less than the flight otherwise would; there have been several times where I have bought a last minute package that included a hotel that I didn’t need simply because it was cheaper. With LastMinute.com, you also get to pick your departure and return days (Depart Wed-Sat, Return Sun-Wed) as well as your airline. Weekends become available for purchase on lastminute.com about two weeks in advance, but availability can be added or removed.
Also Try: The weekend deals of individual airlines — for most airlines these go up on Tuesdays. Note, however, that many airlines require a Fri/Sat departure and a Mon/Tue return.
Best for Students: StudentUniverse.com
StudentUniverse.com (http://www.studentuniverse.com/) - If you are a student, you are in luck, as you may have access to better deals through student-only ticket agencies; I recommend StudentUniverse.com, but there are certainly other agencies out there (like STA Travel). These can offer great deals — as I have talked about in the past. Buyer beware, however: the student airfare results are not always the cheapest option out there, so you should definitely check a traditional search engine first. A nice aspect about buying StudentUniverse tickets is that they have more lenient cancellation and change fees.
Travel Cheaply
Those are my top five websites for scoring cheap flights — what are yours?
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Hi Guys,
Thanks for including Skyscanner in your article. If you like Skyscanner, you may also be interested in our new “Who Flies” widget.
It shows which airlines fly on any route you specify. It’s free to use and dynamically updates when new airlines are added. It’s available in several industry size units and is a simple cut and paste job to add it to your site.
The widget allows your visitors to instantly see who flies from their nearest airport to their destination.
You can even chose to display results in one of 20 different languages.
There’s more info here: http://api.skyscanner.net/en/api/ajax/snippets/who-flies/introduction.html
cheers
Skyscanner
http://www.Skyscanner.net
Flight Search Engine
Hey Skyscanner -
Thanks for stopping by; I meant everything I said about your site. Definitely a great resource for anyone traveling on a budget in Europe (although I realize that it looks like you are branching out from that niche).
I added your widget to this post and I might have a place for it elsewhere in the future. Cool little feature, and so I hope you continue to develop it.
Richard