<p>I am trying to book a two stop college visit for my H and D. Trying to visit Earlham and Univ of Vermont starting from Santa Barbara or LA (only if it is significant savings). I am coming up with airfares over $900 each. Any suggestions? My next plan of action is to see if booking several one ways might end up cheaper.</p>
<p>Are you using a website like Kayake, than checks a variety of the major airlines? Many of those sites do NOT check airlines like Airtran or Southest or Jetblue (becuase they wont pay a fee), so you have to go to each website for those.</p>
<p>I have tried using Kayak, expedia, American Express, United and this morning Jet Blue.</p>
<p>bing? or southwest (with airbus to LAX)? would be what I would try next. Good Luck!</p>
<p>priceline.com</p>
<p>Won’t help for this trip, but my D has found great airfares at Student Universe. You have to be a student to get the deals, though.</p>
<p>We typically purchase one-way tickets.</p>
<p>Have you tried Southwest? It appears they have flights from Los Angeles to Indianapolis for $192, one way, or Los Angeles to Boston for $193, one way.</p>
<p>I’ve had good luck with bing. Click on the Travel tab. It will search a lot of airlines as well as predict if the prices for your flights are trending up or down.</p>
<p>Check on the Southwest site for their route map then determine which cities are ‘close enough’ to your start/end points then see what the airfare is for it. Southwest fares are often excluded from many of the search websites so the results you get back aren’t comprehensive. </p>
<p>The other lower cost airlines without the gouging the legacy airlines engage in are JetBlue and Virgin America.</p>
<p>I just checked out bing for a flight my D is trying to book - what do you know about this “tip” they offer at the top of the page - almost like a “tip warning” that they predict (in this case it says with 61% accuracy) that this particular flight will reduce in price for some period of time over the next seven days…anyone find this to be true??? Cool feature if it’s somewhat reliable.</p>
<p>I expect the price to go up in the next 7 days, and I am saying that with a 50% accuracy rating.</p>
<p>Saw something that fares are heading up again; Less capacity and higher fuel costs.</p>
<p>For a flight to Paris last summer I had a great result using matrix airline reservations. You cannot book a flight through them, but they show all the possible flights meeting your criteria. Just google “matrix airline reservations”.</p>
<p>Even booking it all out separate and using Southwest and Jet Blue for part of the trip I can just reduced it by about $150 and that is with not adding in the cost of the airbus or me driving them 2 hours each direction to Los Angeles.
I have another D at a school in Indiana, I have never found Southwest to be a bargain on that route. Plus the pain of dealing with LAX. We have in the past found Frontier to be decently priced between IND and SBA but the time isn’t great for this trip and the fare is still $283 one way.
edit
tried Matrix- flights coming up $800 to over $2000</p>
<p>Aren’t flights cheapest Wednesdays booking a week in advance? I assume you want a direct flight.</p>
<p>I doubt you will get any cheap type of fare into Burlington. You might want to check flying into Montreal.</p>
<p>How close is Concord, NH? I think Southwest flies there.</p>
<p>While I thought flights were going up (fuel surcharges) just booked a Newark-LAX for $340 round trip end of MArch…I was, honestly, shocked…</p>
<p>TO the op: look into a direct, nonstop in to a larger airport than Burlington VT and rent a car…maybe Boston?</p>
<p>can’t help with Earlham…don’t know the closest (maybe Indianapolis?) large airport</p>
<p>rodney
that is a good fare. In the past I have been able to get older D home from Indianapolis for as low as $188 round trip to our small regional airport.I think the most I have paid is around 400 round trip. I am not getting anything close to that now. If I fly them to Boston they will have a drive plus be using up their college visit time driving.</p>
<p>For Earlham…have you considered flights into Dayton, Ohio? It’s a straight shot down I-70, maybe 45 minutes to an hour at most. AirTran flies there, as do a good number of other airlines. I find it is often cheaper than Cincinnati or Columbus.</p>
<p>I always check plane websites than travel websites.</p>
<p>Little tip: I believe if you order your tickets a month or two (one of those i can’t remember which), they’ll be cheeper than any other time.</p>