any advice for finding cheap flights?

[beckms]

I'm trying to find an affordable (under 200) flight from the Boston area to Houston in May to surprise a friend for her wedding shower. Does anyone have any suggestions for how to find cheap fares?

Does anyone know about student discounts?

thanks!

[KristaMB]

I've never used a discount travel site before, (no $ to go anywhere exciting :rolleyes: ) but here are some links to previous threads:

http://www.cookinglight.com/vbb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=17644&highlight=travel

http://www.cookinglight.com/vbb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=20387&highlight=travel

I know there was a post recently about somebody who was dissappointed with one of these online services, but I can't remember which one. Ah, found it:

http://www.cookinglight.com/vbb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=23156&highlight=expedia

Good luck! I hope you find something.

[Kjente2]

try AVacation.com I put in some bogus dates in may just to see what would pop up. I found a fare of 188 plus tax which seemed pretty reasonable to me...but with airfares, timing is everything... Good Luck!

[Mamasue]

My daughter just recently returned from a vacation in Texas with her girlfriend and they bought their tickets through Expedia for about $200 with tax. It wasn't a direct flight though and had one layover in St. Louis.

[Angela]

I've used priceline.com twice. It's really easy to use and you can get really inexpensive tickets, but there is a drawback--you can't see the flight info until after you've already paid for the tickets they found for you and you can't return your tickets.

If you are on a limited time frame for your travels I would not recommend priceline. I bought tickets to go to Orlando (Disney World) and we ended up using the first day of our vacation as a travel day because the flight priceline found us didn't leave BWI until 1:15 pm and then we flew to Detroit and had an hour and a half lay over, then off to Orlando. We didn't get into our resort at Disney until 10:30 that evening. We were upset that our first day of vacation was spent traveling. I would rather have spent a few extra bucks per ticket and been able to spend sometime in a park.

Amtrak has some excellent offers at the moment. You can go some places for $20! You might want to check out their web page www.amtrak.com

[Jewel]

Timely question since I just booked our vacation two days ago searching all the discount sites! :D I checked:

www.expedia.com
www.orbitz.com
www.travelocity.com
www.cheaptickets.com
www.hotwire.com

I ended up actually buying my tickets from www.alaskaair.com because sometimes the airline has as good or better fares than the discount sites, and the perks are better! For example I found my flight listed on Orbitz for $138 per person flying Alaska. On Alaska Air Online it was $137 per person. Not that the extra dollar was any big whoop, but when you book online at Alaska Air you get 1000 bonus Frequent Flyer miles! If it's your first AA Online purchase you get 5000 bonus miles! :eek:

My biggest price changer was flying into the less popular airports. For example DH and I are spending a week on the northern CA coast. Normally we'd fly into San Francisco Airport, but the SF flight was $260 per person. Flying into San Jose Airport (one hour south of SF and actually closer to our destination) was $137 per person! Woohoo! ;)

[aggie94]

I'd also suggest Priceline if you're not on a tight timeframe like Angela said. I've used them more than a dozen times and can have gotten some amazingly cheap fares. I generally check on Expedia or Orbitz or similar sites for the lowest published fares for the dates I want to travel, and use that information to make a bid on Priceline. I'm flying to Eugene the first weekend of May to visit DH -- the lowest published fare for my trip was about $350, and it was a flight with two layovers. I was able to get tickets on Priceline for a more direct flight with only one short layover for less than $200. I was also willing to use Priceline because I know for a fact (because there are so few flights in and out of Eugene) that I couldn't possibly end up on a red-eye. Since it was just a weekend, I didn't want to end up with a flight that came in super late Friday night and left super early Sunday morning. I knew it wasn't possible for my trip, but it could be with yours, so if that's an issue, check into Expedia, Orbitz, Hotwire (which purports to be similar to Priceline, but you can see the flight times before you buy - the fares aren't quite as cheap as Priceline though) and check individual airlines' websites for internet fares.

[linsleyd]

First af all subscribe to travelzoo.com/top20
I just got tickets for $98 each to Tampa from PA. I also use orbitz and southwest airlines and have always gotten good prices.
Good Luck!

[catharine]

I have been desperately searching for cheap airfare to Mexico City May 10-12 but no luck.

As far as mainstream sites go, obitz it my favorite! They always seem to have the cheapest airfares and cruises.

I also tried hotwire and priceline but don't like the lack of control - maybe I need to get past that.

Anyhow, I found this other site that looks great.

http://www.right.net/~airfare/

They have this white-label thing. Haven't quite figured it out, but the airfare prices are best and although they say the don't give you times, they did for my request.

Let us know how it goes.