I was wondering what is the best web site to book on. I know trip.com offers 3 miles for every dollar but they do not have all the airlines (at least not all the ones for the latinpass promo). ARe there other sites that offer incentives?
Thanks for any input.

Normally it's the airline who you are flying if you are flying a relatively cut and dry iterinary -- mainly because they all offer some sort of bonus miles.

Of course, travel agents have their place on more expensive and/or complicated iterinaries.

You might as well as which religion is best.

Seriously though, I look up prices at Travelocity (now that it offers multiple airport lookup). ITA Software ( http://www.itasoftware.com ) is in BETA right now, but it is going to offer something like that too.

Once I get my prices, I go to CO's website to book.

When I get close to departure, I go to ITN to see what my upgrade chances are.

Glad I could clarify the picture for you.

------------------
"I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered. My life is my own."

I try to book through the airline's individual site for the booking bonuses; however, I have found ITN's display of fare classes VERY useful (especially for upgrades, as stated above! It's nice to be able to "count" down as each elite level clears). The disadvantage of ITN is that it does displays neither scheduled flying time nor meal service, something some other sites (such as Expedia) do.

I have used Preview Travel a few times due to promotions, but the site is rather slow and its reservations system needs some updating. It still does not recognize the new Shanghai PuDong (PVG) airport, and as some carriers (such as UA and NW) have now moved operations from SHA, Preview Travel seems to think that no flights are available.

I always check multiple sites - including the airline site. Its amazing how often the various sites do not agree. For example, I need to fly from Hong Kong to Guilin. Expedia says there are no flights between those cities. Travelocity lists five!

I used to like the sabre system. No graphics, easy to use (once you master the system). You could type in a connecting city rather than having to enter it as a separate stop. You could choose the fare code, and often combine those codes. You could choose the airline for each segment in a very easy way.

You could list fares from High to Low as well as low to high.

I wish sabre would keep continue to separate the old system from travelocity.

Anyone else out there miss it?

Zach

I book on the Delta site when flying Delta due to the 1000 mile bonus.

I too like itasoftware and itn. The bad news is that ita does not have international (yet). ITN uses Galileo/Apollo as its fare engine, whereas travelocity uses Sabre. You might want to check both before doing a final booking.

Bizreservations is great if you want to see the fare for a specific itinerary, however it may not always find the best fares. I have had a couple of complicated international tickets that had the same itineraries but priced better on itn (when it could price it).


[This message has been edited by chipper (edited 02-19-2000).]

Try Bizreservations anyway. Last week I got a better fare (by more than $50) than I did from any other source, including consolidators and the airline's own site. Which, by the way, told me my preferred flights were completely booked.

I like BizTravel. It is by far the easiest out of any other site out there. It saves all of your preferences (FF #, car type, seat type, airline, car #, etc.)

It is a one-stop page to get a complete priced itinerary including air, car, and hotel. You can also book everything on the page with 2 clicks. It also saves your discount numbers and automatically quotes a rate with the discount.

PLUS, it automatically requests upgrades based on your status!!

It also checks the fare every day to see if it has gone down. If so, they tell you how to get a refund.

I miss easySABRE more than words can explain. In the old days (four years or so ago, before it was available on the web), I had an account on AOL for the sole purpose of having access to easySABRE. There is no other system that can even approach its simplicity, flexibility, and most of all, its speed.

When TSG announced their decision to retire it, saying essentially that Travelocity did all the same functions, I emailed them constantly detailing numerous cases where that was sorely incorrect. I always received automated responses.

After the funeral, I told them that I would no longer fly AA or use any SABRE travel agency or booking engine. Obviously they don't care, but I've thus far had no problem sticking to my promise--and now I can really exclude AA from the ban since SABRE has been spunoff since then.

Unfortunately my brain has been rewired for life. Everytime I go to use another engine, I keep looking for that place to type simple commands like "/FARES,ATL,LON,7MAR,ALL"