When a Bargain Airfare is NOT a Bargain
Searching for airline flights is a hassle. Honestly, it can be. In the quest to save money you can spend hours comparing multiple sites and in the end feel annoyed at popup windows, and have too many things to compare that leave you feel more uncertain than informed.
From personal experience, I’ve used many flight search tools including those ‘cheap flight’ search tools promising lowest fares. In my experience, the most trustworthy resource with most sensible flight options to value are the US companies Expedia and Orbitz.
VALUE
By flight value, I mean the $ cost of your ticket, plus shorter travel times, airlines with lower luggage fees, and frequent flier benefits. I recently tested this theory on comparing Seattle to London airfares in August. Both Expedia and Orbitz gave me major carriers and suggested good flight with short times and reasonable cost. One of the bargain airfare compare tools (one that also indicates they include Orbitz and Expedia in their search too) found an airfare for $100 cheaper than the lowest Expedia & Orbitz fares.
Was this $100 cheaper airfare a good deal for me? No, not this time and here are my four reasons why
The cheaper airfare had airlines that charge for checking luggage
The 9-hour airport transfer wait (compared to 3.5 hrs on Expedia/Orbitz flights)
I don’t get all of the frequent flier miles to my airline of choice (mixes airlines on ticket)
No low price guarantee (both Expedia and Orbitz have low price guarantees)
TRUST
Beyond value, is the level of trust in the company. I don’t want to give my passport, credit card and full personal information to a mystery company. If you look behind many of the search engines promising to find the lowest airfares, many are located outside of the US.
A friend of mine once booked a bargain flight to Ireland that was $60 cheaper than any other flight she could find. After booking with her credit card, the company emailed and said they needed her to photocopy the front and back of her credit card, her drivers license and passport then send it to them by email or they would cancel her special flight deal. Really? That sounds more like a recipe for identify theft than a good flight deal.
So the moral of the story here? When booking flights, I tend to recommend and book with established and trusted companies in the US who provide value and service that I can rely on.