Check and double check flight $$!!

[KAWS]

I can't emphasize this enough. I just got screwed about $600 on our flight for next March.

 

My TA said she checked all the airlines and as we were talking prices went up on a few of the airlines, seats disappeared, etc. I finally booked our flight (from Toronto to Ft. Lauderdale) through Westjet. Then was browsing the boards and someone suggested Kayak. I went there and followed a link to American Express Marlin Travel and found the same flight with Canjet (direct, almost the same times) for a total difference of $569!!

 

I can't cancel my original flight unless I want to just keep it as a credit amount on the books (minus $40 per person, which in our case would be $120). In reality I should have checked and double checked everything myself so I'm really bristling at myself rather than the TA who could only go by what she saw that day, but it still is eating at me.

 

So, the only thing I can do at this point is to tell others - DO YOUR HOMEWORK before you commit to anything. It could mean the difference of a substantial amount of money to you.

 

Kim

[zqvol]

Don't beat yourself up too much. Kayak is a great place to start research but until you actually get to the airline and try to book you can't be sure that you can get that fare.

 

I looked at some this morning and found $75 pp less than I had paid. When I started investigating further it turned out to be an open jaw fare to a neighboring airport 80 miles away. No way would i have done that.

[cmich068]

OTOH... the on-board experience is MUCH nicer on WestJet than CanJet :)

[KAWS]

Thanks you two. You've made me feel better. It did look really good but I couldn't, of course, hit that final button or would have had to pay for it. So, perhaps that flight had some hidden hitches that I didn't know about.

 

I've not flown west jet or can jet. I usually fly Air Canada or Harmony and on vacations I've only had that "wonderful" skyservice. Gag.

 

What's done is done or not done anyway, but I just wanted people to realize that they do need to shop around.

 

Thanks again.

 

Kim

[garycarla]

I will repeat - the price you see on early pages of a website sometimes do not hold when you get to the page to do the booking. It is worth taking it a few more steps. They can not charge you if you do not give them a credit card.

[SailAways]

We found the airfares to start out low, then while continuing with the booking process - they kept going up, or a non stop flight ended up being one with two changes. Not what we wanted at all.

 

Finally, by calling the airlines direct, getting their prices, then repeating the booking process on the internet, we found that the direct booking was within $20-$50 of the internet - without any hassle.

 

But, in the end, we booked through AARP (seniors rate), and did much better than either internet, or direct airline process.

 

Now, we only hope that the reservation holds till next April without too many changes - or that the airline does not go out of business!!;)

[Capsu78]

I recently had to book for 4 of us going to a wedding. Since my daughters are part of the wedding party, they were going in earlier. I wanted all of us out on the same flight, however, so that we could share our ride back to the airport.

I found the "best rate" on AA, after comparing it to Kayak... so I had everyone on the same fare. Transaction 1, my daughters, click through the ordering, provide CC, Boom-done at the price I anticipated.

Transaction 2, my ticket, click through the ordering, price now comes up $65 higher! When I ordered my daughters tickets, I must have triggered a price increase due to fewer seats now available on the return flight.

Oh well, still don't know how I could have gotten around this issue, and I did get the logistics I wanted.

My point here is that even though you don't always get the "lowest price in the universe", having the logistics you need at a slightly higher price is worth something too.

[FlyerTalker]

Airline Yield Management 101

 

At any given time, there are numerous "fare buckets" for each flight. These range from full-fare first class down to the lowest discount coach seat. Airlines have sophisticated computer systems and people whose job is to maximize the revenue on flights by allocating seats to each of those buckets in a scientific way. So, although there may be $100 seats on a plane, there aren't a lot of them. In general, except for people who buy refundable tickets, buckets get used up from the cheapest on up.

 

What may very well have happened is that there were only 2 or 3 seats in the lowest bucket available, and your daughters bought them. Then, when it came time for your purchase, there was only availability in the higher priced buckets. Thus the higher price for yours.

 

There is an interesting gotcha at work when booking larger parties.....if you have a group of say four people and there are only 3 seats in the lowest bucket left, ALL of the group gets bumped to the higher bucket that has enough to ticket your whole party. It won't give you the 3 cheaper seats and one higher priced seat. This can even happen for a couple, when there is only one seat left in the cheaper bucket. So it is often better to have separate tickets for groups to ensure the best pricing.

 

In addition, separate tickets has the advantage of all members of the group getting the FF mileage for online booking of the ticket (this bonus is one per reservation) and/or online checkin.

 

The downside is that you have to process a separate e-ticket transaction for each person and separate check-ins. Another cost/benefit decision.

 

If anyone wants more info on fare buckets and how they work, I can post it here. For now, this should be a decent intro to the subject.

[Capsu78]

Thanks Flyer,

At least I got some "education" for my tuition!