By MATT GROS
It used to be so simple. You wanted to go to Paris, so you called a travel agency, gave them your dates and budget, and with any luck, you soon had in your hands a real paper ticket with a real dollar value. Even in the early days of the Internet, it was easier. You went to one of the few booking sites — Travelocity or Expedia, most likely — searched for your route, paid with a credit card and that was it. Maybe you even got a paper ticket in the mail. Those were the days!
Today, however, booking a flight is a total mess. Travelocity and Expedia have been joined by Bing and Orbitz and Dohop and Vayama and CheapTickets and CheapOair and Kayak and SideStep and Mobissimo and and and … I could go on and list every single Web site out there, but I won’t. There are just too many. Instead, I’ll lead you through the steps I make when I’m booking a flight myself.
I’ve covered this territory a bit before — here and here — but today I’ll try to go into more detail. For this experiment, let’s imagine a simple domestic trip: a weekend of snowboarding in Jackson Hole in Wyoming at the beginning of March.
My first stop is, as it’s been for years now, Kayak.com. It’s the simplest airfare search engine — minimal graphics, no discount vacation deals to confuse me, and it searches almost every other site out there — and also the most flexible. I can not only choose a window for my departure and arrival times but also decide where I want (or don’t want) to spend a layover, or which frequent-flier alliance to stick with.
Kayak gives me two decent-looking options: $231 on American Airlines (Newark to Jackson via Chicago) and $241 for Delta (via Atlanta); taxes and fees included in both figures. I’m lucky here — I have gold status on American, so I can avoid the checked-baggage fees for my snowboard.
Of course, I don’t stop there. Next, I’ll check ITASoftware.com, a somewhat complicated site that makes it feel as if you’re a travel agent tapping into unusual, semisecret routes. Maybe there’s a faster way to Wyoming, perhaps through Minneapolis? Not this time. For the Jackson Hole trip, ITA finds the same American Airlines itinerary, pricing it at $230 instead of $231. Frankly, it’s a pretty normal trip, so there are no surprises. And anyway, ITA doesn’t let you book tickets, instead directing you to other sites or travel agents.
So, I check out another site: cFares.com, which has a twist. For a $50 annual membership, you’ll get small rebates if you book through them. Each rebate may be only $8 or $20, but if you fly several times a year, that can add up quickly. And last spring, cFares found me a flight from New York to Paris for $543.17, or about $200 less than any other search engine found.
For my theoretical ski trip, cFares knocks that $241 Delta flight down to $229 via the rebate (clicking the link sends you to Orbitz to book), but it doesn’t bring up the American flight at all.
And so, finally, if I were going to book this trip, I’d go straight to AA.com, login with my frequent-flier account and buy my ticket right there. Except … I’ve waited too long! In the couple of hours between when I first started searching and when I eventually decided to book, the fares have gone way up — the flight is now $298. Still, because I have status on American, it’s the better deal.