Find Cheap Flights - Best online fare search tools
By Nick June 13, 2008
Finding the cheapest flights when planning a trip is absolutely critical, since flights often take up the largest portion of your travel budget and travel expenses, atleast for budget minded travelers. Fortunately, this thing called the internet has brought travelers websites that allow us to search more flights easier, resulting in affordable, cheap fares.
So for the ultimate guide to find cheap flights online. Really, it can be summed up in one word: Kayak. But, I will cover some more as well.
1. Kayak.com
…is your best bet for finding cheap flights online. Kayak has long been recognized as the best fare search tool that finds the cheapest flights, and through my research and usage I must agree. From being able to utilize flexible dates, seeing the “buzz” in flight searches, and having the ability to search basically every other website in seconds, Kayak is hands down the best online fare search website..
2. Lessno.com
It’s a solid flight and hotel search that gives good results for Europe and some Asian destinations. It’s similar to wegolo which is also a good European fare and flight search engine that should be used when booking online.
3. Mobissimo
Mobissimo is a metasearch engine for fares and flights just like Kayak. The results are usually very good. It has a leg up on Kayak because it has access to all of Vayama’s fares and results whereas Kayak only can search a portion of them.
4. Vayama
All of Vayama’s search results are included in Mobissimo, but I figured I’d still list them to give them some credit here. Vayama has long been a favorite search of mine, and they also partner with previously mentioned WeGoLo for European low cost carriers. They have a nifty interactive map too that shows physically how far you’re traveling - aesthetically pleasing if you will.
5. The Giants - STA Travel, Priceline
Among the giant online travel booking agents, I like STA Travel the best for finding cheap flights. Young travelers and students can sometimes find pretty good rates through STAtravel, so they’re usually worth a search. After STA, I’d try Priceline and then Expedia. But chances are, you won’t find any fares that beat Kayak.
3. Your local travel agency -
It’s always good to check your local travel agency and their website out. In my family’s experience, the local travel agency offered the cheapest flights about 50% of the time. For example, as I was researching a Latin America trip, I was compiling the cheapest flights while making a budget, and then fell upon Minneapolis’ little local travel agency website - Hobbit Travel. After a few clicks I found that they offer the best fares by far. They had a list of flights that included Guatemala for $270, Cancun for $120, Ecuador for $360ish, and Panama for $300.
So don’t be fooled by the meekness and or ugliness of your local travel agency, because unfortunately, they still have access to fares that the online flight search tools do not.
4. Web 2.0’s Farecast and FareCompare
Other big hype, web 2.0 flight search websites include Farecast and FareCompare. These are innovative sites that are great for research and planning because of the unique spin and features they have. But, once again, Kayak is still much better.
Topics: Budget Airfare and Airlines, Online Travel Booking |
10 Responses to “Find Cheap Flights - Best online fare search tools”
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Hello Nick,
Thank you for your blog post regarding vayama.com. I noticed that you said that vayama is "basically exactly like Kayak.com", which is not exactly true.
As you also pointed out, Kayak.com is an aggregator (also known as metasearch) site that pulls fares from several other travel websites, including vayama, Orbitz, airline websites, etc. There is no purchase through Kayak, no fulfillment through Kayak, and no billing through Kayak. It simply takes you to one of those other sites to actually purchase your tickets. Thus comparing a metasearch site such as Kayak or Mobissimo with an actual fulfillment site such as vayama is a bit of an apples-to-oranges comparison.
I should also point out that not all of vayama's fares are on Kayak (mainly due to cost reasons), however all of our fares do appear on other metasearch sites such as Mobissimo. You will probably also find more fares from many other travel websites on Mobissimo than you would if you were simply searching on Kayak.
Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions.
Best regards,
Matt R
Sr. Manager - Communication & Airline Content
vayama.com
Great list of sites here. The quality of the sites are quite good. Thare are plenty of cheap airline ticket websites but it is the aggregators that seperate the wheat from the chaff. If you really want to get the best deal on an airline ticket then this is a great place to start. Of course you could also go with the slow travel movement and try to go by train or bus and this actually might save y ou some headaches as well as it seems like the airlines are becoming more and more of a pain to travel with. Sooner or later we will lots of alternatives to air travel and I think that will be a great thing.
Matt, thanks for the comment. I obviously didn't do good enough research :S, and I apologize for the poor comparison. I let some bias get to me. I will, however, go back and re-evaluate the sites and I'll probably amend the post in the near future so I don't compromise my validity. Thanks a lot for the comment - keep up the good work with Vayama.
For Aussies or people looking to fly domestically in Australia, it is worth checking out relatively new site http://www.farefetched.com.au
For booking international flights from Oz, for some reason I seem to find that http://www.statravel.com.au always seem to have slightly cheaper flights available and a couple of times I have found seats on planes on their site when the travel agent is telling me that the flight in question is completely booked out.
Obviously, this info is only of use if you happen to be in Australia or travelling there in the future
Keep up the good work Nick.
Kayak is great for long-distance flights and traditional airlines - however it's worth pointing out it's not generally very good at covering low-cost airlines, meaning for shorter-distance flights it quite often misses the cheapest fares, which is quite a big flaw.
I've just looked at a few European flights and Ryanair, generally the cheapest airline, didn't come up at all. Easyjet only on a couple of routes and so on.
Nick - Lessno.com (less money, no hassle) is another one that belongs on your list. They have some of the best airfares out there for international travel (they are partners with over 75 discount and major carriers worldwide). They also just added discount hotels to the site. Lessno.com has awesome customer service and a kick-ass blog with insider tips for many of the world's greatest destinations. Check it out when you have a chance. Thanks.
Hi Nick,
Thanks for the feedback, and please don't discount the level of your research! The online travel industry is indeed overwhelming, and there really is no one-stop where you can rely on finding all fares on all websites. Metasearch sites such as Kayak and Mobissimo have certainly made the search process easier, but they're not all-encompassing. Neither are bookings sites themselves, as vayama admittedly doesn't focus on domestic fares, whereas other sites may not offer the same options for international travel. Please note that vayama does offer a search for European Low-Cost Carriers (LCC's) through our partner wegolo, which can be found online at http://www.vayama.com/low-cost-airlines
There likely never will be a single site that can be relied on to find all fares through all channels, so in the meantime it's still best to search through at least a few websites when shopping for airfare. That means that blogs such as this which do point out the strengths and weaknesses of those many various sites are arguably the best source of information for the consumer to determine where they should start looking.
Best regards,
Matt R
vayama.com
Hi,
I just wanted to point out that kayak.com has removed all online travel agencies except for Orbitz and Cheaptickets. They were under direct pressure from the airlines to remove fares that were below what they were offering on their websites.
This is a big shame for consumers. Sites such as vayama, airfare.com, lessno, jetcombo and others offer fares alot cheaper than aa.com or orbitz normally does. Kayak sells itself as searching hundreds of sources and being impartial. But this is not exactly true.
Mobissimo has not given into these pressures yet and still offers all the online travel agencies selling consolidator, private and net inventory. Hopefully they will be able to hold out and get some business from kayak. Farecast has also limited online travel agency participation and really is not competitive in finding low fares internationally.
So, check it out yourself. Im sure you will see a dramatic difference between mobissimo and kayak now in finding the best international fare.
Martine
Lessno.com sold me a ticket that was supposed to be round trip between my hometown in the U.S. and Ljubljana, Slovenia but turned out to have a major gap in the middle of the return trip: they had me landing in New York JFK and flying out of Newark. These airports are many miles apart, in separate states. Just because they both serve the NY metropolitan area does not mean that it’s an easy transfer between the two. It took me several hours and a fair amount of money and I was worried I would miss my flight. I know I should have caught this glitch when booking the tickets—I saw Newark and read “New York” or I wouldn’t have booked it to begin with—but Lessno.com should not come up with options that they market as “round trip” that don’t include a complete return trip. I called them from JFK and they were not helpful at all, they did not even help me figure out how to get from one airport to the next. I’d be cautious about using this site for flights within, from, or to the U.S., as they don’t seem to have a good grasp of geography and airports in the country.
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