Has any one used priceline?

[kel24]

I am trying to find cheap flights from Rochester, NY to Fort Lauderdale in February and the cheapest I can find is $700 roundtrip. I was thinking about trying Priceline's name your price but I'm a bit skeptical about it and am worried because you have no choice in the flights. However, I would fly out the day before and come home the day after the cruise if I did this. Has anyone used priceline's name your price for flights before? what was your experience?

TIA

[6rugrats]

I have used Priceline many times, but not for air travel. If you are considering this, I highly recommend you do some reading at http://www.biddingfortravel.com and education yourself about the process.

[dclark]

I used it once four years ago and I got a great price for holiday travel. However, I never use it anymore. Why? Read on.

Planes are traveling pretty full, so there is less need for airlines to try to sell them on priceline or hotwire. However, you can still find some flights on both, but they are usually not a good deal.

What I found is that the price you pay might only save ten percent or less than if you booked it yourself. That's not much of a savings for giving up your right to pick a time and airline. Even worse, you don't get frequent flier miles. Suddenly it doesn't look like a deal. That's why PL is emphasizing convential bookings.

Also, the bargain is even harder to find with all the variation we are seeing with luggage fees. For example, the PL flight with Spirit might be $25 less than delta, but delta doesn't charge for the first bag (I don't think!), so it is a wash.Plus, you have to watch out for airlines that are not solvent. WHat would happen if you got a PL bid on Spirit and then they went bellyup? Who pays, you, Spirit, PL or CC? WHat about getting a new flight? WHo will pay the money for tagament now that you just got an ulcer?

My rule of thumb- if you bid on PL, don't pay more than the cheapest flight available minus 30%

[Emerald31]

I used Priceline a couple years ago for flights. The flights were 1 stop each way with layovers of 2 hours each. However the times could have been better, outbound we arrived at 7pm with a departure of 7am. As you can see we received flights that noone else wanted to purchase. The upside was that we did save over 40% the going rate.

[Grannycb]

We've used Priceline for other things but not flights. Have you tried http://www.kayak.com/ ? It looks like NorthWest might have some cheaper flights depending on your dates.