<p>I’ve used Travelocity and Expedia a lot, but how about the others? Does Priceline still bind you to a specific time and do you still bid? (Used Prline once a few years ago and didn’t like the specific time.) What about Hotwire? Any others? </p>
<p>Pros/Cons/recent experience…thanks everyone</p>
<p>Orbitz is good. I still prefer Southwest when I can. They now have a special offer promo called “ding” and you can get some truly unbelievable fares through that. This weekend we’re going from Baltimore to Albany for $24 each way (plus taxes).</p>
<p>Cheaptickets.com. </p>
<p>Sometimes the airlines’ websites have the best prices. So check there also.</p>
<p>Thanks, will check out Orbitz and Cheaptickets…</p>
<p>I have always gotten better deals on Continental.com than Orbitz or Cheaptickets.</p>
<p>It’s been awhile since I looked at Continental.com, but I recall that, if you book directly with them, they give you double miles for frequent flyers. Other than that, their prices were essentially the same as expedia.</p>
<p>What I always do is go to Orbitz, find the flight, and then purchase it through the airline, usually a little bit cheaper. Orbitz is nice, though, if you have a multi-section flight, or strange return scenario - they will use multiple airlines, and give the best return price from each, even though you are only using each airline for a certain segment, and then only one way.</p>
<p>When booking your flight through any site other than the airlines’, check the fine print about qualifying for miles. S bought a ticket on Cathay Pacific through Orbitz and found out his fare didn’t qualify for the miles. Ouch!</p>
<p>If it’s for a student, check out studentuniverse.com. They have great fares, even up to the last minute. Unfortunately, you have to be a student (with a school email address) and 24 or under.</p>
<p>Flatbush, I just tried Student Universe, and it did not ak me for student ID or email? Is that why it quoted me a fare $40 higher than all others? Or did I miss something?
Thanks</p>
<p>I think it was Orbitz that prompted me to check other airports. (The other travel sites did not do this) We live near Newark airport but saved a ton of money by driving to Philadelphia for a nonstop flight to Phoenix. All flights from Newark were one stop so we didn’t even increase our total travel time.</p>
<p>I have had the same experience as mini.</p>
<p>I check out fares and schedules on the various travel web sites, but then buy tickets on the airline web site, if I can find the same time and fare (approximate). The airlines seem to be a few bucks cheaper, perhaps due to the lack of a processing fee or some such thing.</p>
<p>I have found the same thing with hotels. The big chains all seem to run “web specials” which are cheaper than the travel sites.</p>
<p>I just got onto “sidestep” which compares many of the popular travel sights. When I do a search on Travelocity, Orbitz, individual airline sites etc. it pops up and allows me to compare prices from multiple sites. Hope that makes sense! 
</p>
<p>Go to sidestep.com for a demo and download. I was worried that by downloading the program/toolbar I would open myself to other adware, but that hasn’t happened.</p>
<p>For cross country trips and on designated routes, I would check out all the discount airlines--jetblue.com, southwest.com (for the West/South?), independence air, etc. Jet blue’s fares are so much better than most of the sites–I often compare them to expedia, travelocity, etc., and get much better fares on them (this is for travel from the west to the east, I realize they only service a limited number of cities. Plus you get nonstop flights, have more legroom and directTV, and friendly staff.</p>
<p>We did great with Southwest lax to new orleans. I got D’s one way fare to school for only 109. Even her last minute hurricane fare on southwest was 400 less then the other airlines. It was our first experience with them and it was great. The only drawback was having to go to LAX.
When recently pricing last minute fares to Denver I used expedia. When I added the hotel and priced it as a package it came out $300 less for the 2 airfares and 2 nights in a 4 star hotel then it did pricing the tickets separately. I was pleasantly surprised</p>
<p>Sidestep.com compares the results from all of the major sites mentioned above. Beware, however, that it is considered adware/spyware by some programs (such as Spybot, I believe). </p>
<p>Also try itasoftware.com–it allows you to build everything up from scratch and I find it cheaper than the more mainstream sites. Only problem is you can’t buy directly from the site and sometimes the fares they list are gone.</p>
<p>My IT folks at work confirmed that Sidestep.com is spyware. I ended up taking it off my home PC, and I did notice a decreased amount of spam.</p>
<p>Thanks everyone. Sounds like user beware for Sidestep…</p>
<p>Have just checked some fares on Hotwire. For their lowest prices, at least for the trip I was looking into, they can’t list the carrier, so it seems similar with what I recall with Priceline…</p>