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Low Budget Travel Survival Guide
Low budget travel is an art, the art of exchanging knowledge and time for less expensive transportation and more interesting experiences. Our simple overview of ticket buying on this page gives information that may save the hurried traveler some money. Other pages will go into more detail, these are directed towards travellers with more time than money. For the time/schedule/appointment bound good luck, we will assist you in your nonstop ways, but we hope you will find, eventually, that true travel includes getting there and that the more money you spend the less you really see.
Finding the cheapest airline tickets involves visiting many websites to compare prices, and making decisions about how flexible you want to be in planning your travel. These short reviews provide the options you need to search for airline tickets cheap on the internet.
Each ticket agency has advantages, each will be cheap on some flights, more expensive on others. The airline itself may offer the best deal. Remember that Tuesday, Wednesday and Saturday, apart from holidays, are often the cheapest days.
Orbitz.com is a big company and many consider it one of the best. They do better at flights within the USA, tickets for international destinations may be cheaper elsewhere. Orbitz will show alternative days for departure and return together, a great time saver for those with flexible travel plans.
Expedia.com is business traveler oriented and seems to do a fairly good job. The number of choices available may be less than other sites, but customer service is pretty good, the ticket prices are cheap and the site is very easy to use.
Hotwire.com, perhaps due to heavy advertising, seems to get a lot of infrequent fliers. Customer service could be better at this company. Hotwire marks peak travel days on their calendar and warns you that those days are more costly. They do not tell you the airline name up front and in some cases their prices are higher than other companies.
At Priceline.com - customers make an offer for the trip they want. If the offer is accepted your credit card is billed right then. You do not get to choose the time of the flight or the airline. Name-your-own-price tickets do not earn frequent flier miles and there is some question if they really are cheaper. Priceline also offers fixed price bookings for specific flights. A lot of people report problems with this company, particularly with customer service.
Travelocity.com, Orbitz.com, Priceline.com fixed price and Expedia.com seem to be almost identical in their airfare pricing.
Cheapair.com gets raves for their customer service and ease of use. They can handle requests from other countries better than some other companies. They often quote a different price than their competition - sometimes lower, sometimes higher.
Cheapflights.com will give you a list of the tickets available in the next few days, rather than asking you to query each day separately. Airlines price each flight on each day individually so this can be a major advantage for those who have flexible travel plans.
Travelzoo.com does not book tickets, they are an information source of the best deals globally. Often they can give information on airline tickets available at a small fraction of the market rate. If you need to fly to a certain city at a specific time they may not be of much help, but if you are looking for somewhere to go for your vacation you could save a lot of money here.
These discount ticket agencies earn their money based on commissions the airlines pay them for sending customers to their website. Discount ticket agencies usually do not offer tickets from Jet Blue Airline, Southwest Airline, Air Tran and other budget carriers. You have to check those websites individually.
Do check with several of these companies and write down the airline, day, flight and time of the offers that sound best to you. --- Then check the website of the airline! The airlines have to pay a commission to the ticket services and often they will give a slightly cheaper price or other perks if you buy directly from them. For example Delta's website was $5 cheaper on a recent ticket, plus they gave 500 extra frequent flier miles for booking directly.
Remember that the time of departure on your ticket is the time the airplane actually is supposed to leave the terminal. The door to the airplane closes about 15 minutes before the time on the ticket. Probably more people have missed flights for that reason than any other. Perhaps the misleading listed time is to shorten the perceived length of the flight, but it is an annoying habit of all airlines.
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Airline Photographs on this webpage are from www.sxc.hu