New Air Travel Search Sites

Before you squeeze yourself into another airplane seat, make sure you squeezed the best price possible from the airline.  This article, "How to Choose an Air Travel Search Site," by Seth Kugel, the New York Times frugal travel reporter, will help you in your search.

He didn't mention my favorite place for information, ITA software, but he does supply the latest sites that will help you decide on the best airline for your particular destination.  Check out the article and discover some newbie sites that provide valuable information.

One-Ways Cheaper than Multi-City Flights

In September, I'll be visiting family in North Carolina and Pennsylvania, spending three nights in each state.  When I priced the tickets in June, I used two different approaches.

The multi-city flight, using ITA Software, with one round-trip ticket (Tucson to Raleigh to Philadelphia and back to Tucson) would have cost $821.50.  Since ITA Software gives the prices for many airlines, I also checked the same round-trip ticket with the same multi-city routing and dates on an individual airline site--American Airlines.  American Airlines gave me a figure of $844.40.

Next, I priced each segment as a one-way and found an amazing price difference.  Three separate tickets cost the following: $159.80 on American Airlines for the Tucson to Raleigh flight and another $159.80 for the  Philadelphia to Tucson flight.  I also paid $138.90 for the Raleigh to Philadelphia flight using Delta Airlines.  (The price for the RDU to PHL route was prohibitively expensive on American Airlines, but fairly reasonable on Delta.  Since I was buying one-way tickets, it was easy to shop around for the best price for that segment.)

The total for my three one-way flights is $458.50 which is an astonishing $363.00 cheaper than the cheapest multi-city round-trip flight ITA was able to find.

I don't know if it is consistently cheaper to book one-way flights instead of a multi-city round-trip ticket, but I will always spend a few extra minutes to find out.  

Practicalities -

If you haven't used ITA Software yet, be sure to give it a try the next time you book a flight.  While you can't actually purchase tickets on the site, it gives more information about options than any other site I know.  You almost feel like a travel agent with all this information at your fingertips!

Note, too, that you can use ITA to find the best price on upcoming flights.  For example, I just priced a flight from Raleigh to New York (JFK) in November and found prices ranging from $183 (mid-month) to $277 (beginning of the month and around Thanksgiving).  When your dates are flexible, using this software is an easy way to find the cheapest time to fly.