For Great Plane Ticket Deals, What's the Best?

On any given day, you will find similar fares on different sites. The trick is that fares vary A LOT day to day.

I start on kayak.com. They'll give you a 30-day graph of airfares, so you know if they're currently high for a given route. You can also sign up for notices on a given route--I get an email anytime roundtrip Dallas-Boston (where my sister lives) is under $250. Which happens more often than you'd think--I got $198 over Christmas! Once you find a good deal, however, I would agree with the post below that things usually go best if you book directly with the airline--use kayak to see, for example, that United is cheapest, then go to the United site to book the fare.

You can also check out farecaster.com--this will give you probabilites on whether flight prices will go up or down. Be patient and flexible, and you can find a good deal!

I check the prices on those "deal" sites but I always book directly with American or Southwest. I am not "sold" on the sites that offer all the discounts.

MOST of the time, the fares are on the airline website are the same (or close to) the discounters price and with less restrictions. Also, when you book with the airline specifically, they are more receptive to working with you in case of any issues.

I just booked tickets to Orlando for Spring Break and the price was $293 each. I checked the same time frame for Destin and got $374 per ticket RT.

Go to the airline site, when you plug in your airport and destination info, check the price and schedule option. You will get prices available for economy all the way up to first class. Also, American has fare specials you can check out, sign up and get email reminders for your destination.

Southwest works the same way basically. Southwest is SUPER easy to work with when you have the refundable tickets. The only negative with SW is that you don't go very far on a direct flight, you usually have to change flights or make 1 stop and stay on the same plane. If that is not an issue for you then you may come out cheaper.

IF you place a ticket on hold with American, that fare is not guaranteed until you pay. I have gone back in to pay and the fare be higher and it has been lower before.

I book all of hubby's travel as well as some of his colleagues (no, I am no agent, I just get in here and work the deal with air, hotel and cars).

It also helps if you sign up for the frequent flyer, hotel guest, car rental programs.

Good luck!

Hi S.!
I've used most of the travel sites out there and have never had a problem with any of them. My recent good deal was purchased on priceline to Tampa, FL for spring break, I payed $342 for 2 round trip flights, that was on NWA. I really like travelocity too, I did several trips with them last summer. One of them I booked that morning and flew out that afternoon, no probs, not a glitch, everything went beautifully. Good luck.

We used cheaptickets.com for our tickets in July, and got a great price.

We've been happy with Travelocity. We always purchase the cancellation insurance and have used it before to cancel and rebook.... and we did get our money back. It is true that the fares change not only from day to day, but from hour to hour! I have seen it! If you see a fare that looks good, book it. All of the companies are reputable, so don't worry.

BTW-- Destin is lovely!!

cheaptickets.com sometimes has pretty good deals. I usually check everyone and then go with the best one. It's kinda crazy looking when I'm looking because I'll have a whole bunch of windows open at once.

One reminder, look for extra fees. American charges for everything, so even though they're the largest carrier out of DFW, they're sometimes the most expensive one too. Destin will be hard to get a good deal (I've tried) because it's not a large airport. If you can rent a car you might try Mobile, it's not a bad drive from there.

My husband and I like Orbitz, generally, but we've also used travelocity and directly from the airlines websites. Nowadays, most websites are going to give you the same price in order to be competitive. It's not like it was 10 years ago when there were some websites that were much better than others. Orbitz now has "price assurance" where if someone books your same flight for cheaper, they'll send you a check for the difference (after your completed trip).