FareCompare advertises great fares through their email notification, but when I follow the links I can't get remotely close to the fares they promote. How do the pros at FlyerTalk find these cheap fares?

For international they usually don't work for me. They are usually missing a fuel surcharge or something. More often than not, the price I get in the email is before taxes and surchange, but YMMV.

FareCompare is being very straight with us, but you need to understand what they are dealing with. FareCompare always gives us the "+" fares. The actual fare that the airline charges. The airline can (and often on international flights do) add "surcharges and fees" on top of that fare. These can be for all sort of absurd things, the current one is a significant fuel charge, but applied selectively to various markets, and not applied in any rational way. It really should be included in "fare", but US regulations do not require it, so the airlines continue to mock the intelligence of flyers everywhere.

FareCompare's fares also do not include government taxes. In the US, our domestic tax stucture added to a fare is almost palitable. But on international flights, and with other countries, these taxes and fees ban sometimes be hundreds of dollars. Many people avoid flying to the UK simply because of the absurdly high taxes.

It is not entirely uncommon to see international flights (in a discount market) where the airline surcharges and fees and the various government taxes and fees exceed the base fare.

Fares can also have many more limitations including capacity controls, date specific, day of the week specific, blacked out, direction specific, and even time of day specific! The fare FC quotes is the lowest fare in the market, but is driven by complex rules issued by the airline. If the airline chooses to, they can issue a fare that FC reports that is never available to the public. FareCompare can't tell that; they just report the fare. for domestic flying, try dates on Tuesday and Wednesday, avoiding any dates that have any significance to anything whatsoever, and generally in a fairly tight timeframe. Or read the ruless. Or use ITA or something to search for month fares at a glance, and hope that some sift to the top (they won't all sift).

FareCompare is reporting "+" fares or "base fares". It appears to be beyond their ability to sort out the various airline and government games to give us an all-in price. And to their credit, it is a difficult task, and is not consistent from all flyers to all locations.

I dearly wish FareCompare could give an all-in fare that is 95%+ accurate for 80% of the world's flyers. But they haven't risen to that challenge. Until they do so, they offer a GREAT set of tools (that are often a bit clumsy to use), and they give a great INDICATOR of fares and fare trends. But you have to add in the surcharges and fees.

"... If the airline chooses to, they can issue a fare that FC reports that is never available to the public."


Slightly OT, but why would an airline do that?

Why do airlines advertise?

To draw attention to themselves in an attempt to make profits.

The fares indicated in the alert email won't available through booking sites for several hours after the altert is sent. So if you click on the link and immediately try to book a ticket, the fare in question probably won't be loaded yet.

I generally fly Delta, who always seem to be last to lower their fares in the markets I watch. So things generally unfold like this:
1) FareCompare email alert arrives with a new fare from a competitor.
2) Four to 24 hours later, Delta matches above fare, but there's no email from FareCompare since the price isn't any lower than step #1. Just have to keep an eye on the cities in question.
3) Two to six hours after step #2, Delta's new price is available on purchasing sites.

Beyond those caveats, there's also the simple fact that cheap fares sell out fast. ITA's flexible-date search is a good way to find days when those fares are still available.

I've noticed that recently FareCompare slightly changed their format, I seem to no longer be able to examine the specific itinerary (layovers, etc.) without actually clicking on the 'book it' button.

Am I missing something or did they really update something and mess this up?

I'm newish at using FC. I've searched for posts about FC and read many but I'm still having a bit of trouble. I'm hoping someone can help.

For example, I receive a FC alert saying UA: PMD-MHT is $198. I click on the link and am taken to a FC page that shows the $198 plus taxes and fees which brings it to $234, available April, May and June. Fine. So I click on May and FC displays the dates this fare seems to be available (Tuesdays and Wednesdays). So I select a Tuesday as an outbound and Wednesday as a return (say April 20-21, for example). Now I am taken to a page that lists the flights available those days and the least expensive flight is $307 on UA. This can't be taxes and fees because the taxes and fees are what brought it up from $198 to $234. Now if I go back and stab at different dates, I can bring it down to $250, but I'd like to be as wise about this as possible. One poster cautioned FTers to remember to read all of the fare rules . . . but my problem is that I can't FIND fare rules until I'm at the booking stage, and the minimum fare it's showing me to book is the $250. Are there fare rules somewhere earlier so that I can read the fare rules for this $198/234 advertised rate and then have an idea from the fare rules what sort of dates to choose?

Thanks for the help.

It's a shame that the folks at Farecompare no longer participate on Flyertalk so that we could carry on a dialogue with them and help them improve their product. It's still a very useful tool these days but it is far from what it could be. For the time being, think of it as a tool to get a heads up on pricing action with air fares.

The US government needs to require airlines to provide total revenue pricing again. I don't care what the heck you want to call it - you can break your fare down to basic fuel, fuel surcharge, fuel scarcity charge, baggage handling fee, catering fee, whatever; but all of it has to be included in your total revenue figure. This revenue amount should replace the nowadays rendered useless (except to the airline for obfuscating their real charge for the ticket) "base fare" amount.