Adventures in Airfare

I've come to some rather opinionated positions on the byzantine process of purchasing airline tickets. Mind you, I'm not a seasoned pro, but I've had the opportunity to engage in two protracted battles in the last few months. Therefore, when it comes to buying plane tickets....

Forget search engines. Kayak, Orbitz, etc? Forget 'em

Really.

Well, not entirely.

You use search engines as a starting point, to find out ballpark figures and which airlines fly to your destination, and what times are available. It's a useful research tool, but not a reliable buying vehicle. All the websites - Kayak, orbitz, expedia, travelocity, hotwire - will have the exact same prices. They do a good job of showing lowest fares first, etc. However, as I learned through my experience and through some airfare advice websites, the prices are often estimates based on averages, and are always subject to fine tuning on the part of the airline. Airlines do not like these sites - not that they lose money because of them so much as that they're notoriously inaccurate. I tried to buy Eleuthera tickets through them one time last fall, only to find out that the flight quoted to me did not actually exist, and was based on last years' schedule for that date. I found this out through the airline, later. Luckily, expedia did not let me finalize my purchase, but told me that "we cannot guarantee that price at this time. Try again later."

You buy through the airline directly, and on-line. First of all, you pay $15 per ticket extra if you speak with a human on the phone. Plus, if the flight is posted on the airline website, it actually exists. More importantly, though, I never saw a price on one of the search vehicles that was less than the airline website. Often, the airline was less expensive than Kayak - sometimes significantly. Kayak, etc., only updates their prices a couple times a day - hence the averaging of prices. (By the way, Kayak only sends out alerts once a day. Prices change dozens of times a day.)

The airline website prices can fluxuate profoundly. There are the usual prices, which roughly match with Kayak, then they'll spike up during prime times. Sometimes outrageously, and you'll panic, thinking that you've lost the lower price forever. If you can, give it a few days. Relax.

But sometimes the airlines will have an unannounced sale through their website only. These are rare, and only last for a few hours. A day at most. So you do your homework, knowing how the rates fluctuate (over a period of weeks, if you can), and learn what the usual price is. There will be a usual price. Then, you lurk on the airline sites, obsessively (or at least I do), and be patient. If you happen to check during one of these surprise sales, and you get a surprise price, you're ready and armed with information. You hit it like a topwater buzzbait on a Tennessee farm pond. BLAM!

For me, There were only two airlines that could get us from here to Nassau in time to catch the last puddle jumper to Eleuthera: USAIR and Air Tran. Both had a couple of viable choices for flights, but each had only one ideal flight to-from combination. Air Tran's was the better, as it was 7$ more per on average, but allowed us to leave Dayton an hour later in the morning than USAir. If you have to drive an hour to the airport, an 8 am flight is substantially better than a 7am flight.

Trouble is, this cuts things close. If that flight sells out, you're screwed. Good luck getting to Eleuthera in one day. Now you figure in an overnight layover somewhere. So. how long to wait before you suck it up and pay the "regular" low price for a little certainty and peace of mind? I almost did this.

Wait. Check the website again. And again.

Not only were the Air Tran flight times slightly better, but I'd been watching Air tran's website literally since January '11, I hate to admit, and I knew how low their prices could potentially go for this flight. I hadn't seen those prices for our specific dates, unfortunately - not within $150, in fact. On the website, you see the to and from prices and times a la carte. There were some good one way prices, but never for the combination of dates and times we needed. Wait. Check. Wait. Check. Multiple times a day. Waste VAST amounts of time and speed up the aging process. Be patient. keep your passport numbers in your wallet, as you'll need them to buy your tickets. Wait. Check again.

Checked Air Tran late one January night. Something funny was going on. The home page said something about a "warm weather sale" in the upper corner. I ran a search. Instead of the normal a la carte prices, the website showed much higher prices. Odd. I ran an itinerary, and when it got to the total cost, it was the usual price. Somehow, they changed their website to show the a la carte prices with taxes and fees. Odd, that, too. Checked again first thing in the morning. Same deal. However, checked later in the morning, around 10:15 - big drop in price. Numbers I hadn't seen before. Did they just go back to pre-tax numbers? Run itinerary. Nope. Those WERE the numbers with tax. and cheap. The game's afoot.

Total cost - $144 less than the price I was almost resigned to paying two days earlier. Pounce. Fast. BLAM. And you do so with confidence because you've been doing your homework for a long time. Probably too long.

Based on my research, I'd expected $1500 to get us to Eleuthera and back. Thanks to my obsessive efforts, it will cost us $1146, including puddle jumping. That's still a hell of a lot of money, but I feel pretty triumphant.

This is, by the way, exactly how I saved $120 on my March Dallas flight. Radiohead was awesome.

Wow. I wrote way too much.