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Because of factors beyond my control, I have not set foot on airplane, much less booked any flights for about 5 years. So I am planning to fly RT from Austin, TX to San Francisco (or Oakland) at the end of March. Could someone who is a frequent flyer fill me in on what sites to use, tips on how to book this at low cost, etc.? I am pretty flexible about the days I fly and the length of my trip, though I am assuming about a week.
I like starting with kyack. Since you are flexible you can search using their +/- 3 day feature then once you have a itinerary you like check with that airline's site to make sure that you can't find a better deal. You should also check southwest's site since they don't come up on consolidator sites
I usually use Priceline. Flights tend to get expensive inside of 1 week before departure. Sometimes they get cheap again the day or so before if they still have seats to sell.
Use a good search engine yes, that looks at every combination of flight within a given date range and given airport distance to your origination and destination...
I don't know how good priceline or kyack search engines are, but I and many of us here use this - Matrix - ITA Software by Google
But this is the key to cheap flights - be flexible with the times and locations, and always book at the airlines website. Priceline, Kyack, you won't get cheaper flights using those sites, forget about the promise of "discount airfare websites", sometimes they are more expensive. Just use the search engines and go to the airlines website and book.
OP, I strongly recommend you do NOT use any sites like Kayak or Priceline. Instead, book directly through the airline. The reason is that you usually will not save money booking through these third party sites and if you have a problem and need to cancel or reschedule your flight, you may be in for a big headache and be hit with additional fees since you're going through a middleman. I've used those third party sites in that past myself, and they've caused me nothing but trouble. Expedia is particularly awful. Just compare prices on flights through the different airlines and then you'll know exactly what you're paying for. Good luck!
OP, I strongly recommend you do NOT use any sites like Kayak or Priceline. Instead, book directly through the airline. The reason is that you usually will not save money booking through these third party sites and if you have a problem and need to cancel or reschedule your flight, you may be in for a big headache and be hit with additional fees since you're going through a middleman. I've used those third party sites in that past myself, and they've caused me nothing but trouble. Expedia is particularly awful. Just compare prices on flights through the different airlines and then you'll know exactly what you're paying for. Good luck!
While I agree that booking through these sites usually don't come up with the best fares, they are useful to knowing which airlines to focus on. For example, I can fly to Las Vegas from the DC area from 3 different airports on multiple airlines. The time it would take to go to each airline's site to check rates from each airport with some flexibility would take way more time than doing a search on a site like Kyack where the results will allow me to know how to focus by search, by knowing that the cheapest fares are coming from one airport and 2 or 3 airlines and possibly the giving me the best dates in my window,
Also there are some occasions where 3rd party sites can get you the best deal. The recent fare error with Etihad was only accessible through 3rd party sites. This resulted in a $700 savings per ticket. Granted there is some news that people are starting to have problems with flights getting changed or cancelled and Etihad and the 3rd party vendors are blaming each other but the issues are getting resolved. I've been lucky so far but I think that's because I have a direct flight
I am flying for the first time in years next month, and used Kayak to monitor prices but ended up booking directly with Virgin America because they had the best fare and flight times, and yet YVA isn't even listed on Kayak or other price-hunt websites. My rate on VA was much, much lower than anything seen on Kayak, Expedia, Orbitz or Priceline (by over $200 per ticket).
OP, I strongly recommend you do NOT use any sites like Kayak or Priceline. Instead, book directly through the airline. The reason is that you usually will not save money booking through these third party sites and if you have a problem and need to cancel or reschedule your flight, you may be in for a big headache and be hit with additional fees since you're going through a middleman. I've used those third party sites in that past myself, and they've caused me nothing but trouble. Expedia is particularly awful. Just compare prices on flights through the different airlines and then you'll know exactly what you're paying for. Good luck!
Let's be a bit more precise with advice here. Priceline/Expedia/etc are travel agencies i.e. "middlemen". Kayak/ITA/Skyscanner are search engines/aggregators (with a few exceptions for Kayak I believe, where they sometimes have some "deals"?) and should be treated as such. They have time-saving features such as flexible dates, check nearest airport, etc. that would be impossible (or at least a huge PITA) to tabulate if someone went on their own and checked all airline sites. To completely avoid those sites altogether is similar to do a web search for a given subject without using Google or another search engine.
Once you find the lowest price, check with the airline, or with the few airlines that do not actually show up on those search engines (Southwest, Norwegian, VA). It will often be the same price or a few bucks more than the cheapest travel agency found by Kayak/ITA/Skyscanner, then you can decide whether it's worth the risk to deal with an agency instead of the airline. For my last few bookings through Kayak, I was actually redirected to united.com and bought my tickets there. I have no clue how anyone can have any kind of confidence that they are getting the best deal without using an aggregator as part of their search.
Sometimes you should go through the airlines directly, sometimes Priceline or wherever. I've probably lost a few bucks here and there booking through Priceline in the past, but I don't travel much, and it's pretty convenient. For hotels, sometimes they can be cheaper. For flights I'm not sure.
But I got a rental earlier this month for 6 days for a Chevy Cruze for $160. Through Priceline. That includes taxes and fees. The only other fee I had was filling up the gas tank at the end of the week for $15 or so. It would have cost me probably $200 more if I had gone to the rental counter directly and asked them how much it would cost.
That said, I will start looking at the airline websites directly in the future to see if I can get significant savings.
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