Smart shopping here can literally save you thousands. When we were shopping for airfares across the Atlantic, we found prices for similar economy class tickets ranging from around $1400 per person all the way up to almost $2000. These differences were due to different dates of travel (but all within a couple of days of each other), different airlines, different connecting cities, different fare rules, and different travel agencies and web sites used. For a family of four, a $500 per person difference works out to $2000 in total.
Finding the best airfares
All air fare searches should begin at the website ITA Software by Google. This website probably has the best search capabilities on the web. The downside, however, is that you cannot book your flights through ITA Software; they offer airfare search only, not booking. However, once you find the fare you want, ITA gives you a goal to aim for as you try online and offline travel agents. We tried both, and definitely recommend online travel agents.Booking on a single airline
If your chosen flights are all on a single airline, you are lucky; you will probably find the same fare at that airline's website, and you're all done booking. In our case, however, the lowest fare required us to have one of the legs on American Airlines. I can't say why, because the flight was code-shared between AA and BA (British Airways), and it was the same physical airplane regardless of whether it was booked under the BA flight number or the AA one, but for some reason, the fare was significantly cheaper with one leg AA and the other 3 BA.USAA is a no-go
Since we knew the exact flights we wanted to be on, our first thought was to use USAA to book our travel. I thought it would be easy, since we knew precisely which flights we wanted to book, I had the fare codes and rules, and figured they could just type the information into their system and purchase for the tickets. Unfortunately, our experience with USAA's travel agency in this regard definitely did not live up to my expectations, to the point that I am not sure I would trust them with my travel planning in the future.It took some wrangling and persuading to convince the travel agent on the phone that I actually did know the precise flights I wanted, but USAA's price for the flights was much higher than the fare I had seen on ITA. They quoted a per-person rate higher than that quoted by ITA, and it was the same price for the kids as it was for the adults. I told them that the fare I was looking at had a discount for children under 12, and the travel agent explained (condescendingly) that airlines booked seats, and it didn't really matter how old the person in the seat was. I was able to give him the exact fare code and read the part of the fare description where it said children under 12 were to be booked at 75% the rate of an adult. The travel agent equivocated, and then said he would find out if he could get approval to give me that fare. He put me on hold.
And I held.
And held.
And held.
For 45 minutes I waited on hold until I figured out he had probably abandoned me—maybe even ended his shift and gone home.
I called back and spoke to a different agent. This agent was unable to find the flights I requested, and by this point, after over an hour and quarter on the phone between the 2 calls, I was ready to try online.
Online is a challenge
There are lots of online websites for booking travel—you know that: Expedia, Travelocity, Kayak, Hipmunk, etc. At most of the websites, you put in your search cities and are at the mercy of the website's search engine to find your desired flights. In our case, none of the websites would show us the precise set of flights. Hipmunk, which I had never heard of before, showed a lot of promise, since it allows you to put specific flight numbers in your searches, but when I requested my specific flights, it told me none were available.Apparently, there are different search and booking services used throughout the air industry, so it is certainly reasonable that different websites couldn't find the same fares. I thought it odd, though, that none of them could. I also considered the possibility that ITA's information was out of date and that Hipmunk was correct in telling me that there were no seats available.
Orbitz for the win!
I had just about despaired of finding the lowest fare anywhere and was ready to book directly through British Airways (which, being direct through the airline, was cheaper than any of the online travel agencies). But one more website…Finally, I was able to find ITA's fare on Orbitz! It wasn't exactly the same price, but it was the same fare code and the price wasn't terribly higher (and it was better than any of the options presented by the other websites). I don't know the source of the discrepancy; ITA's data may have been out of date, or Orbitz may have been raising the price to take a profit—something you can't hold against them, since they are a business, not a public service nonprofit. But from what I've read online, if you can get within 10% of ITA's rates, you're doing pretty well, so I was happy.
While I can't guarantee Orbitz will have our fare next time, they will certainly be my first try next time I need to book travel.
Postscript
Since writing this post in 2014, Google has now (in 2016) come out with a Google Flights website that not only allows airfare search, but also forwards you to the appropriate site to book your flights. Going forward, we recommend using Google Flights over ITA Software by Google.
