This holiday season, competition between airlines will dictate the going rate of your flight ticket. Travel columnist Tom Belden recently discussed how one Philadelphia-Boston business traveler was shocked to see US Airways offering a basic round-trip coach ticket costing $1,115 for the 281-mile route, even if he purchased two months in advance! To find a better way, this passenger considered driving or taking the train from Philly to Newark, New Jersey, where he could hop aboard a $270 US Airways flight to Boston, which ironically connected through Philadelphia. “Think about the irony,” Belden writes. “The travelers on US Airways could wind up on the Philadelphia-Boston leg of the trip sitting next to someone who got on in Philadelphia and paid five times as much.” Since Delta pulled its Philadelphia-Boston route in August, there is no competition among carriers, Belden argues. To sort through this madness, many holiday travelers will visit www.farecompare.com, a website full of researched flight deals.
FareCompare is a new website geared toward helping you find the best flight deal, and each day processes feeds from over 500 airlines and more than 270,000 city pairs worldwide. You’ll even see fares from carriers like Jet Blue or Southwest, which typically don’t share their deals with aggregator websites. Their high-tech software delivers fast results for an enjoyable shopping experience. On this website, you can find cut-rate tickets for domestic and international travel, discounted first class flight ticket deals and expert insider travel advice. In addition to finding great deals on flights, you will also find up-to-date information on cheap hotel rooms too.
One of the most popular features at FareCompare is the “Best Time To Buy” tab. If you’re looking for a flight ticket and your departure/return dates are somewhat flexible, you can save yourself as little as $20 or as much as hundreds. The unique thing about this website’s search is that you receive real-time information right away. For instance, you enter your departure city and your arrival city. Then, when you click on the departure date, a calendar will pop up telling you when the cheapest and most expensive flight fares are offered, so you can pick a date accordingly. The same calendar option comes up for your return date as well.
FareCompare understands that many a traveler has been burned on a flight ticket purchase in the past. Conventional wisdom seems to say that planning and purchasing ahead will save you big bucks. However, last year, procrastinators saw record-low prices on their travel due to oil prices dropping from $145/barrel in early July to $60/barrel in early November, not to mention the recession left fewer travelers than expected. FareCompare founder Rick Seaney doesn’t expect this rare confluence of events to occur this year. Oil prices are always a wildcard, of course, but so far it seems like cheap flight ticket deals are in abundance.
Kenny Leichester is a foremost expert in the interior design industry specializing in the outdoor or patio settings using outdoor heaters, patio umbrellas, outdoor cushions, patio lighting and so on to create exquisitely beautiful layout. His work on patio umbrellas are widely distributed and is a regular contributor to PatioShoppers.com.