This week we talk our strategies and practices for booking airfare vs. jumping in the winnebago and cruising at 35 miles an hour down to WDW or DLR.
Subscribe to the feed or download the episode.
This episode has been brought to you by TouringPlans.com, the website that has that Crowd Calendar and those Touring Plans and this Lines App thing.
When you book a Southwest flight using Flight Funds, keep an eye on the expiration date. They will always used the oldest expiration date for the new flight. For example, in June 2010 I booked a December flight. When the price went down, I rebooked, resulting in the extra money being put in Flight Funds. In October, I booked a May flight using the flight funds. I later cancelled that reservation, and when I went to use the Flight Funds I discovered that they expired in June 2011 and not October 2011 as I expected.
I haven’t used them, but I understand that Yapta.com will tell you if ticket prices for your flight has gone down.
My friend Google told me about this list of the “Ten Best Airfare Alert and Listing Sites”: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20975800/ns/travel-news/
@Katie – have you looked into Amtrak vs. driving from the Triad? We are taking our first train trip to WDW next weekend. We have to drive from Tenn. to S.C. to catch the train, but then it takes us straight to Orlando (or Kissimmee) in about the same time it would take to drive. It’s also pretty cheap; for the two of us it’s just $187 round trip.
I just priced one-way 30 days from now and it was $50 from Raleigh to Orlando in coach. (@Henry – probably less than the 50¢ per mile you’d be wearing and tearing on your car). The train leaves Raleigh ~9pm and arrives Orlando at 10am.
Many travel agents *can* book flights, but none of the airlines pay commissions (the way agents usually get paid) anymore, so there are only two ways I’m aware of an agent can book a flight for you:
1) Charge a fee (what I’ve seen usually is $25 – $50).
2) Book it as part of a package.
Either of these are viable, but booking it as part of a package (most likely how the flight for the China trip is being booked) doesn’t add extra fees for the traveller.
Without going one of these two routes, to the best of my knowledge a travel agent can’t book flights for you. However, they may well be able to find the flight for you and then tell you, “Go here, enter this, book this flight for the best deal.” They may also then watch the flight options for you and based on possible cancellation fees you may have let you know about a different/cheaper flight they found later on for you to book.
I want to suggest Bing Travel. If you type SFO to SNA into Bing.com it uses the Farecast technology. It has indicators on if prices are rising or falling for a given flight and even suggests when you should buy for a trip given your travel dates.
I am sure you did not mean it but you said Virgin is adding strange places like Seattle. Living in Seattle all of my life I have to take offense to that. Virgin is a great way to fly to LA from Seattle but then again so is Alaska. Alaska is really the only way to fly direct from Seattle to Orlando.
PS. Keep waiting for the announcement of a Windows Phone 7 app for touringplans.