Online Travel Booking and Bidding Agencies - Booking on line is a nightmare

I stopped traveling for business due to health reasons in August of '07 and I am not familiar with changes on how some of these on-line websites operate.

We are trying to see family in the Pacific NW (Seattle and Vancouver) in August and I am at my wit's end with these websites.
I found a fare of $237 r/t with taxes included and clicked on the fare and suddenly the fare is $401.
I found a quote of $179 and thirty seconds later the fare is sold out and it is over $200 higher.
Search engines, so to speak, find low fares and then you can't find the quoted fare, no matter how "flexible" with travel dates you can be.

I am talking about, in no particular order, Orbitz, Expedia, Travelocity, Kayak, Fare compare, Cheaptickets, Mobissimo and several others that I did not bother to bookmark.

Is this common or am I just picking the wrong routes? We want to go ILM > SEA (Wilmington NC), prices out of RDU are cheaper but add in ten days of parking and 250 miles of gasoline and the advantage, primarily on Southwest disappears.

Any suggestions or even just a shoulder to cry on?

thanks to all

Steve

You said you are traveling with a family. Quite often, there may be a small number or just one ticket available at the low price you see in the search engines. So if you try to buy six, for example, it's highly unlikely you will get so good a price as the person buying one ticket at that moment.

With the dynamism of both airfare purchases and airfare prices, it's very hard for any database to be 100% accurate.

What dates, and for how many people, do you want to book this flight?

You're flying to the Pacific Northwest at a popular time of the year, are potentially competing with cruise passengers for seats to Seattle and Vancouver, and are trying to book fairly close to your departure dates. As mentioned in the previous post, finding six seats at once may be a problem. Are you using flexible search options to look at dates before and after your preferred dates, or are you locked in to specific travel days? Do you all have to travel on the same flight? The more inflexible your plans are, the more difficult your search will be.

You're flying to the Pacific Northwest at a popular time of the year, are potentially competing with cruise passengers for seats to Seattle and Vancouver, and are trying to book fairly close to your departure dates. As mentioned in the previous post, finding six seats at once may be a problem. Are you using flexible search options to look at dates before and after your preferred dates, or are you locked in to specific travel days? Do you all have to travel on the same flight? The more inflexible your plans are, the more difficult your search will be.

Could not have said it better myself. I find that orbitz is the easiest booking service to use but keep trying. it will pay off in the endhttps://tipgnome.com/images/smile6.gif!

Pardon the delayed response, I had some outpatient surgery on Thursday and was out of commission for a day or two

It is just two of us traveling. Our dates are relatively flexible, save that the family reunion is the 14th to the 16th in Vancouver and we want one last day in Seattle with my wife;s family. My wife is a teacher aide and has to report back on the 18th but she can be a day or late as she has sufficient time accrued.

We'd like to go ILM-SEA on the 8th or 9th, even the 10th but as expected Monday night flights are more expensive.
Nearby airports have slightly cheaper fares but drive time and parking for ten days negates any advantage in a cheaper price in say Raleigh or Myrtle Beach. At home, we can have one of the kids take us back and forth, we are only ten minutes from the airport.

What troubles me is that the fares I click on dissappear once I try to book and then the same fare is there day after day but one cannot book at that price. Where is the advantage, why not just book directly on Delta or USAir and what good are these sites?

SRM

It is always a good idea to also check the airline sites, since sometimes they even have specials not on the general sites.

Romelle

I just checked lots of flights around those dates... you are getting caught up in a high demand travel time... and cut capacity on the airlines.... all the cheap fares have sold out.... so you are going to have a tough time getting a good fare now. The cheap fares are long gone.

In addition, your dates are blacked out for the cheap fares:

Category 11: Blackouts
For -J6 type fares Note - Rule 1100 in dgr applies -and- For -J6 type fares If travel occurs 200AM to 759PM daily travel is not permitted 19JUN 09 through 22JUN 09 or 24JUN 09 through 27JUN 09 or 28JUN 09 through 30JUN 09 or 01JUL 09 through 03JUL 09 or 05JUL 09 through 15JUL 09 or 16JUL 09 through 17JUL 09 or 18JUL 09 through 20JUL 09 or 22JUL 09 through 24JUL 09 or 25JUL 09 through 26JUL 09 or 27JUL 09 through 28JUL 09 or 29JUL 09 through 31JUL 09 or 01AUG 09 through 04AUG 09 or 05AUG 09 through 10AUG 09 or 13AUG 09 through 15AUG 09 or 16AUG 09 through 18AUG 09 or on 20AUG 09 or on 23AUG 09 or on 30AUG 09 or 02SEP 09 through 05SEP 09 or on 07SEP 09 or on 12SEP 09 or on 14SEP 09 or 17SEP 09 through 21SEP 09 or 24SEP 09 through 25SEP 09 or 30SEP 09 through 31DEC 10.

Looking a bit, I see these as your options, based on what you said:
$450 USD per person on Delta, for ILM-SEA. Some variation in dates allowed.
$258 USD per person on Delta, for RDU-SEA. This is Aug. 8-20 (so stretching a bit, but still doable based on what you said).
Total prices, with tax. Both are bookable right now.

For 2 people, maybe you might find a way to make the drive and parking fees work? Maybe you can find a cheap motel that does a park and fly package.

Sometimes, clearing your cookies works.

You may also try looking some of the other small airports in the area MYR, EWN and OAJ sometimes have reasonable fare. I don't know offhand the parking costs etc. involved in that.

They also don't have the cool rocking chairs that ILM does.

It seems that sites like orbitz etc are using cached information and not real time information when you search for fares. As soon as you try to book they fetch the prices real time - and they have changed.
I found the airline sites in general much more reliable to come up with the real information.
Usually i use orbitz, travelocity etc just to find out which airlines to use and to get a price idea, then use the airline website to book.

When booking a small group, I sometimes find it useful to purchase only a few tickets at a time and then wait a day or two or more, at which time more seats may be released into a lower fare bucket. If you cannot wait, brak up your purchases to utilise the lowest available fare buckets. Purchasing 6 seats all in one transaction will push you into the fare bucket where 6 seats are available.