Airfare Comparison

As we've discussed in our Las Vegas Hotel Room Comparison Report, if you are planning a trip to Las Vegas, it's always advisable to do a little legwork yourself and see if you can cobble together a cheaper trip than a package would offer you.

Plus, you will have the added advantage of choosing when YOU want to leave, rather than a tour operator. 

As we've demonstrated in our Hotel Room Comparison Report the prices you get can vary considerably depending on where you look. In the past, we've noticed some differences when we look for airfare as well, but not as pronounced as with the Hotel Rooms. 

We took a look at four distinct travel sites that allow YOU to choose the time of departure. We did not look at hotwire or priceline because they do not allow this feature. If you are more flexible in your travel times and how many times you change planes en route, then checking these sites out may be of advantage to you. 

Our four travel sites were Expedia, Travelocity, Orbitz and Trip.com. What we wanted were their cheapest fares regardless of time of departure. We also wanted to fly NON-STOP which is important to us for a number of reasons: GOING to Las Vegas is a high expectation/excitement type thing. We don't like hanging out the Phoenix airport for two hours so we can save 50 bucks. LEAVING Las Vegas means we are usually drained physically, mentally and financially, so we'd like to get home as soon as possible.  We also wanted to leave out of Chicago's O'Hare Airport. No Greyhound bus terminal at Midway for us!

Our first stop was Expedia. We've always liked Expedia for booking air travel because their interface is so easy to use and it is so flexible. If you want to change dates or times halfway through your search, it's no problem here. Expedia is also relatively quick in their response time. When we punched in our May 24 departure and May 27 return Expedia came back with a "special" that had to be booked right away for $316.00 (as with ALL travel sites, taxes and fees ARE included with all quotes) on American Airlines:

Orbitz is a travel site that the airlines have put forth. Travel agents have been howling over this site since Orbitz routinely offers airfares below what travel agents find in their systems. What prevents a travel agent from finding a fare on Orbitz, we don't know, but it probably has something to do with their commission.  What was interesting was that we could not find the above flight on American Airlines to save our lives. We tried using the clumsy interface to change the parameters of our search, but for some reason Orbitz was not offering this particular AA flight. The cheapest non-stop they offered was another American Airlines Flight for the same 316 dollars: 

We weren't to thrilled with the departure time on Friday, so we looked for one that was a little more agreeable. We found one for 335 dollars on America West

If you monitor chat rooms and news groups around the internet, Travelocity is the site that is almost universally revered by its users. Even travel editors rave about it. What we did find appealing was that Travelocity allowed you to punch in your departure and arrival cities and they'd quote the cheapest airfare, with the corresponding restrictions. Of course, leaving on Friday hurts our chances for the bargain airfare. Instead, we dutifully entered our information. The next page that pops up is their "preferred" airline page. You can get fares from their "preferred" airline if you clicked the appropriate button. Why this would be appealing, we don't have the foggiest. The whole point is price comparison. We'd rather not have our choices limited, so we bypassed this option. 

Travelocity may be beloved by all, but we found that this site was S-L-O-W. Orbitz and Expedia were lightspeed compared to the turtle's pace on Travelocity. At times our browser would stop. We'd hit Refresh and then nothing. We returned to the previous page and then nothing. We then re-entered our info at the start. Finally after getting a cup of coffee our choices were displayed.

The cheapest non-stop flight was National Airlines at 251 dollars:

Well, the Friday flight time isn't too bad. We'd like to leave in the morning, but getting to Las Vegas before midnight isn't so bad. It's the flight coming home that's a bummer. Schpoo, Philster, Jimbo and I are planning to work on Tuesday. A 1:15am arrival won't cut it. So we pressed on and once again found American Airlines at 316 dollars, only THIS time we found the mysterious flight 1779 that Orbitz couldn't locate:

Finally, we wound up at Trip.com. This was one of the first travel sites we found when we first logged on to the Internet lo these many years ago. Since that time, Trip.com has tailored itself more to the business traveller. With the recession though, they are trying to woo anybody who wants to buy a plane ticket. The interface at Trip.com has undergone its fourth incarnation that we know of. After all this time, it is still the clunkiest interface of the bunch. You still have to make an extra click for "More Search Options" so you can specify only non-stop flights to be returned to you. The other thing we found annoying was a pop-up ad for American Express. Pop-up ads suck. 

The cheapest flight returned was the same American Airlines flight that Orbitz returned. It too was 316 dollars:

Like we said, we don't like the arrival time of 12:12am, so we went for one with a better and more agreeable time. We found the exact same 335 dollar America West alternative that we found at Orbitz:

So, in the end, what did we learn??

On this particular search at least we found that all of the travel sites returned similar airfares, although times had to be adjusted to get the best. 

Expedia has the best and fastest interface. Travelocity is the slowest, and Trip.com is the clunkiest to use.

Travelocity did return the cheapest alternative at 251 dollars and offered the same attractive alternative that Expedia found for 316 dollars. 

Historically, we've found Orbitz to be the cheapest of the four main travel sites, but this was not the case this time. In order to get the flight times we wanted, we had to pay more.  At Trip.com, we found the same information that Orbitz provided, albeit we had to endure some inconveniences. 

The moral of the story is that the internet is a powerful tool if you want to comparison shop. As a consumer, you must be willing to use it, and you must be willing to devote some time to use it. 

Our next article will put all of this together and we'll compare what some of the major tour operators offer for the same hotels as a comparison. 

So stay tuned!