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The airline industry is very interesting. I’ve always found their structure, incentives and operation intruiging. The way they structure their airfares is a mystery. I mean, you can sit next someone on a plane who paid 10 times the amount you paid, for the same seat. You can also fly within Europe for 1 Euro with the cheap fare airlines.

Over the years, I’ve purchased many tickets online. I found that when looking for the best fare, you must check with all online travel sites. There is no single site that has the best fares everytime. Sometimes I found the best fare on the airline’s site itself (United.com, round trip to London from San Francisco for $450 last summer.)

The following are webpages I typically visit:

QIXO is a little known “airfare search engine” that gets the best fares from many sites. I found great deals here and is where I go when I narrow down my travel times. It also works for travel not originating in the US. They charge $20 service fee.

orbitz.com has two advantages: It can search +-3 days and mix and match airlines for your route which is often convinient. However, the trip must originate in the US.

travelocity.com/yahoo travel has a flexible date search that is very good if well, you are flexible on the dates.

expedia.com, cheaptickets.com and the others have nothing special about them, but are required when you are airfare hunting (for my next trip, I found the ticket on expedia.)

ryanair.com and easyjet.com are the cheap airlines of Europe. They fly to main cities, but to the more remote airports than the main hubs. Airports like London Stansted, Oslo Torp and Frankfurn Hahn are 2-3 hour bus ride from the city centers and main airports.

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 24th, 2005 at 3:11 pm and is filed under personal, reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.