When and where to book flights to Vegas to get the cheapest airfare?
Saturday, July 31st, 2010 at
10:51 am
How long out is the cheapest time to book a flight online. Which method is cheapest..i.e. Travelocity or Exedia or Priceline etc.. Or should I go directly to the airlines themselves? Please help and I will send happy thoughts your way along with 10 points!
You might consider downloading Yapta as well….I would check the online site for Southwest Airlines. They tend to be cheap and have frequent flight to Vegas.
i always fly Virgin and it suits me just fine
Travelocity, Expedia, and Priceline are rip-offs. Orbitz has great deals. I just bought last minute tickets from NM to PA for 163.00 round trip (other sites were around 400.00). Southwest also has great deals. They have a “gotta get away” promo online with tickets starting at 49.00 each way, I got tickets thru them from NM to FL for 86.00 each way.
It is depending on where you are flying from. Check out spirit air you can get really good deals, not sure if they fly from where you are. Southwest and airtran have really good deals as well
When you search for airfares you will probably notice they are just about the same. During some searches they do not add taxes and fees in the search which makes them seem lower that is until you go to book and suddenly they add the fees and taxes and you find it was the same as the others. That is because airlines do not discount anymore unless it is to everyone. No one site gets a special deal like they might with hotels. So you will basically get the same price no matter who you book through. The only thing is you may get more of a choice in flights when you go directly to the airlines websites. Southwest is the exception because they will only book through their website so they don’t appear on any other site.
It seems the best time to book is about four to six weeks out. You should start looking at prices as soon as possible and be prepared to purchase when and if they drop. Everyone had a system before on when to buy their tickets. Of course everyone knew when to buy gas for their cars for the best price, like that works anymore. So it is a game with no rules or no hints to work with. When someone figures it out it will change again.
Travelocity, Expedia, orbitz and all the other sites are good in that they look at all the airlines where if you went to each airlines with out them you would be a very busy person online. There is no profit anymore in selling airline tickets. That is why most travel agents and sites charge a booking fee. They pay the same as you do.
You can get great fares at any time, for just happening to be there at the time they are offered. Southwest recently had great fares. I look at Yahoo Travel and then compare it to the airlines direct website and pick the best.
You’ll usually do better with a vacation package…Check swairlinesvacations.com and usairvacations.com… there are some pretty good deals out there…sometimes you can do better booking flight and room separately…if you do this check out i4vegas.com for room rates…I haven’t found a good deal from any of the above sights that couldn’t be beat by the vacation packages from SW and Us Air. One thing about SW, they have a lot of direct Flights to Vegas also…and so you are not spending 8 hours a day flying! as for booking…if you find what you think is a good deal for where you want to stay, or a vacation Package or a really good price on a round trip ticket…go for it the day and time that you find it! The prices can change from hour to hour and day to day…usually you won’t pay much more even if the prices drop…I recently booked thru USairlines for room and flight from Albuquerque, NM to the Golden Nugget Hotel for 3 nights for 2 for $535 for September…not a direct flight but only about an hour longer each way and change of plane…would rather go direct, but SW couldn’t beat it, and I couldn’t book for September until after April 7…I had my $$ and wanted to make sure that I could pay my ticket, so went ahead and booked…Some friends of mine are thinking about joining us, and yesterday found same dates (3 nights) and round trip Flight for $484 for 2 and stay at Fitzgerald’s…we like it downtown…the rooms are a little less usually…but there were some good deals on the strip also…Good Luck!
Southwest has had the best recently.
I always use SideStep.com to do my research. i have alsways found them very useful and informative.