Tim Leffel's Cheapest Destinations

A New Airfare Game Plan

As I stress in the Make Your Travel Dollars Worth a Fortune book, the airfare game is constantly changing and what worked two years ago or even last Sunday can suddenly not be the best bet anymore.

The big change over the past few weeks is a shift in how and where to buy your plane ticket for flights originating in the United States. Delta and Continental announced that they were dropping their mileage bonus for booking directly through their website. They still had an edge though on the best deal because the independent booking sites charge a fee – usually $5 to $10 per ticket. Today though, Priceline announced that it was dropping all booking fees for regular flights booked through them. (The ones where you pay a published fare, not where you name your own price and see if anyone goes for it.)

This is huge, especially if any of the other booking sites follow their lead. In general it’s easier to get a response from customer service by e-mail or phone from these sites than it is from any of the airlines: Delta even charges you $10 to book something over the phone with them and then still routes you to a bad phone connection and a thick accent on the other side of the world.

The airlines will tell you that their sites always have the best fares, but it’s just not true. Twice this year I’ve found and booked a better fare by using an independent site found through BookingWiz than I could find booking direct with the airlines, even including the extra fee.

One other big change: round-the-world tickets. It used to be cheaper to go to Toronto or even London and buy your round-the-world ticket there than it was to buy it in the U.S. Since the U.S. dollar has gone into freefall against both those countries’ currencies, however, that is no longer the case. Suck it up and pay the price here now, or do what I advise and just buy your tickets on the fly as you go after the first flight or two. If you’re going to be in cheap countries, the local price will usually be less than you would pay buying from a first-world country in advance. Plus it’s hard to see all the budget flight options out there from here and the competitive landscape changes all the time.