From my inbox,
“Dan, I live in New York and I always look forward to your fare postings.
My problem with your farecompare links is that most of the time the fare says sold out for the dates that I want. Can you explain to me this phenomenon?”
You’re in luck-there are 3 great deals out of NYC tonight!
Here’s some behind the scenes info.
Airlines publish airfares 3 times daily. From the time they are published it takes between 3-5 hours for it to reach all of the booking sites.
Often I post the deal soon after the fares are published-so they are not yet bookable.
Airlines have a very complicated system of class codes. In coach itself an airline can have 20 different fare codes. The price that I write about is the lowest published fare code-of which there are only so many available on any given flight.
When farecompare tells you “sold out” after you try to price out an itinerary that means that on at least one of your flights there are no more seats available in the low fare code.
Mind you, sometimes if you go directly to the airline’s website, it will actually have availability for the dates that you want even though farecompare said sold out!
I passed on the essence of your question to farecompare, and the CEO of farecompare, Rick Seaney, answered me that later this year they will roll out a new system that will actually tell you if the lowest published fare code is available on any given day, before you have to go and price out the Round-Trip ticket.
Until that point, there are a few other options.
One is to use Travelocity.com’s flexible booking tool. Just type in your origin and destination and choose “dates flexible.” What comes back is a listing of the lowest published fares, separated by airline. By choosing a fare it will take you to a calandar, of which you choose your preferred dates. If the date you chose turns into an X, that means try again-the fare code is sold out for that date. Keep trying until it allows you to choose a return date and prices out the itinerary.
Travelocity however will only do this for a domestic flight. For an international flight, Zuji will give you the same functionality with the flexible search.
Other Booking Tips:
-Unless you require a highly complicated itinerary, it is almost always best to buy directly from the website of the airline that you are traveling on.
-If you do find a cheaper fare on a site like orbitz, be sure to take advantage of the airline’s price guarantee policies!
-Always search for 1 ticket, even if you are a larger party. Many times there will only be 1 seat in a lower fare code-but if you search for 2 seats it will sell you both of them at the higher fare code!
-Nearly all domestic fares that I post are valid in either direction.
-Take advantage of credit cards that give you 3-5% in cash rebates in addition to earning you miles. Examples are the Continental Mastercard for Continental tickets and the Delta business Amex, the Starwood business Amex, or the Jetblue business amex when flying Delta or Jetblue.
Have any more helpful tips? Please share them!
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