<p>We have had good luck with Bing. They also give you advice as to if you should buy or wait, along with a price history. I’ve found rates are lowest on a Tuesday, so check often.</p>
<p>Definitely check Southwest Airlines. They won’t come up on kayak or orbitz - you have to check their website:
go here and you can search for lowest fares if your dates are flexible:
[Southwest</a> Airlines - Southwest Shortcut](<a href=“http://www.southwest.com/cgi-bin/lowFareFinderEntry]Southwest”>Southwest Low Fare Calendar | Southwest Airlines)</p>
<p>The big benfit (besides no fee for checked baggage) is that if the price goes down you can re-book and have a credit. You have a year in which to use your credit. I have found that generally fares are lowest on Mondays and Tuesdays on SWA.</p>
<p>Sorry, I’ve been gone a few hours.</p>
<p>I did check both Delta and Northwest because they are the two that fly often out of Detroit and both had several non-stop flights. BOTH had none today. The fact that BOTH airlines had SEVERAL choices of non-stop yesterday with LOTS of empty seats, and ALL of these are gone today??? (sorry, not shouting just emphasizing 
) Too weird. </p>
<p>I did briefly check Southwest earlier today - they will fly out of Detroit, but are not non-stop and the rates were not any better. I am booking for after Easter so I THINK I still have time to give it a little time. </p>
<p>Will keep you updated and Rodney, please do the same!!!</p>
<p>I also think there is something weird going on with the Delta/Northwest system. I just searched for flights in March between Chicago OHare and another Midwest city (normally direct flights because there is no major airport in between). I failed to find any non-stop flight between these 2 cities. In fact, I could not search for non-stop flights only (when searching by schedule). My search only returned flights with connection through other Midwest cities or Atlanta in the east coast </p>
<p>My general rule of thumb is that prices will drop immediately after you buy a nonrefundable ticket.</p>
<p>I’m just hoping this is all some sort of weird glitch - too weird that from all these different cities, no non-stop flights show up.</p>
<p>Except for the fact that you can’t book through the site, the ITA website linked above is the best for searching airfares on most major airlines (not Southwest or Allegiant) because you can manipulate the search results if you know the commands. I’m seeing $115-130 each way DTW-SAT for all of April on various airlines, but no nonstops are offered from DTW or MSP (Delta hubs) O’Hare has nonstop flights on United, American, and US Airways operated by United. You can also check an airport closer to home to see if the difference in price by flying from DTW is worth the trouble.</p>
<p>Answering some other questions/issues posed by the OP and other posters.
- Unless it is Minneapolis, Detroit, or possibly Indianapolis, Delta/Northwest does not fly nonstop from ORD to other midwest cities, that would be United or American. There has been a problem of the Delta website forcing connections by traditional DL hubs rather than more convenient former Northwest hubs, but I doubt that’s the problem here.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>A direct flight has a stop somewhere, but you don’t change planes or flight number. The airline term is nonstop flight.</p></li>
<li><p>Seats are priced in something called fare buckets. Each bucket holds only so many seats. As R124687 mentioned, a fare code/fare basis is the specific fare and fare rules/ticketing conditions for a certain ticket. Fares do sell out on certain flights and/or certain fare buckets can be blocked for one or all segments of your journey. Spring break is a popular travel time, I just paid almost twice as much for a ticket as I normally do because I am flying on popular days.</p></li>
<li><p>Double and triple check that you have the correct cities, dates, and flights before you buy your ticket. I normally suggest booking on the airline’s own site rather than an online travel agent unless I am flying multiple airlines on the same itinerary. Calling the 1-800 number will cost you in additional ticketing fees. Since your itinerary is solely domestic and not very complicated, a travel agent isn’t necessary, especially those that “plan” your vacation by calling the same 1-800 number you can. Sometimes your local AAA can issue you tickets without a fee if you are a member, but buying tickets is really easy to do online.</p></li>
</ol>
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<p>Do you know whether that is a glitch or a deliberate strategy?</p>
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<p>Some times they even change planes. I’ve been on a number of “direct” flights that did. They call it “change of equipment.” The flight number does not change, so they consider it the same flight. Functionally it’s the same as making a connection.</p>
<p>^^^ I was searching for flights between Chicago OHare and Minneapolis. Both nwa.com and delta.com shows NO non-stop flights between these 2 cities. Can that be true?</p>
<p>A travel agent can find things quickly that take forever on line, and this service has been worth paying for at times. We have multiple airports within a few hours, and figuring out the best routing and prices sometimes is not easy to parse out between the various travel sites.</p>
<p>I have read speculation about the reasons, but I think it has to do with the reservation systems merging and delta.com still preferring Delta flights. Northwest will officially be gone as of January 31, but some vestiges will remain a little while longer (nwa.com will not be). The merger caused me some annoyance when I needed help with a Delta flight, but half the “Delta” gates at SEA were actually serving Northwest flights and had Northwest’s [different] computer system (I was connecting to Delta in ATL).</p>
<p>Change of gauge/equipment flights are not the best. You do save a little in taxes, but a direct or change of gauge flight usually only gets you the miles you would have flown had the flight been nonstop; a connection would net more miles because the stop is taken into account.</p>
<p>I did some searching and found out why certain Northwest flights are not showing up and it involves Delta updating its system to show flights formerly operated by Northwest as Delta flights As per delta.com </p>
<p>Technology Tune-up
It’s time for a delta.com update. We are updating our reservations systems. Some flights are temporarily unavailable for purchase. If you’re having trouble finding the flight you’re looking for, please try back after 3pm EST (-5 GMT) on January 24, 2010.
We apologize for the inconvenience and encourage you to return to delta.com to make plans for your upcoming travel.</p>
<p>I hope this solves the mystery.</p>
<p>SEAtide that last part of your last post - I hope that is true and that there the mystery will be resolved later today…</p>
<p>You would think the phone staff would have known this!</p>
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<p>They can “encourage” all they want, but if I were you, I would be booking flights on Southwest by now. Southwest serves both Detroit and San Antonio.</p>
<p>Just curious, why are you recommending Southwest so highly? Again, I’m not a seasoned traveler…</p>
<p>Thanks to Rodney I see that the non-stops are back now - but the prices are MUCH higher than Friday! I will do a little observing at Kayak and see what I can find this week.</p>
<p>Southwest Airlines have a policy if the flight you book goes down in price and you are able to rebook the same flight, you get a refund of the difference in a credit for future flights.
Cancellation of any flight will result in a credit that has to be used within a year.
Please stop using exclamation points and capital letters. We understand your confusion.</p>
<p>Sometimes I wonder whether clearing your private data - cookies and the like - might yield better rates. Do the airlines and online travel companies track your searches and then raise the prices on those flights?</p>
<p>I booked a flight a couple of days ago for my D to New Haven. I was going to fly her SW from Little Rock to Hartford (and then take CT Limo) for a little over $220 iirc for the air portion + $94 for the coach. Went to book it the next day and got zilch. Tried again the next day, still zilch. Called SW and the lady on the phone thought (as I did) that it was a glitch. (I couldn’t book to Philadelphia either from LIT). She came back after 5 minutes on hold and said “Well. Somehow- we are now not flying those routes from midnight 2/10 till March whenever.” (Of course, my D was leaving a.m. on 2/11.) What happened to those flights that were there two days ago? “I dunno.”</p>
<p>$500 later, she’s booked Memphis to New Haven/Tweed. :(</p>
<p>I don’t know who has the best luck on finding cheap flights but …I may know who has some of the worst.</p>
<p>^^^ I was searching for flights between Chicago O’Hare and Minneapolis. Both nwa.com and delta.com shows NO non-stop flights between these 2 cities. Can that be true? "</p>
<p>No way! Northwest typically has flights all day long between the two! Something’s not right. Try United and American as well for flights in between O’Hare and Mpls. </p>
<p>And try Southwest between Midway Airport and Mpls. Midway is such an easy airport to fly in and out of.</p>
<p>^^all is back to normal as of this morning…</p>
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<p>Reasonable fares, decent service for a budget airline, and they fly into the airport that I prefer of the three in my metropolitan area (less traffic between my home and that airport than the others and less difficulty parking at the airport).</p>