Bad Orbitz?
 

I often rely on Orbitz to price out trips, in fact I used the software that powers Orbitz for quite a while before Orbitz came online. I’ve just noticed something recently with my results, and I’m wondering if anyone else has the same thing happening.

I live in the Bay Area, so I don’t really care whether I leave from SFO, SJC, or OAK as long as it’s United ;-) So with my Orbitz searches, I often use SFO as the departure city but select “and airports within 100 miles” thinking that will produce the optimum cheapest results. The other day, I think to myself, why not just try SJC for a change, and what do you know, the results spit out $100 cheaper for the same days and same destination. No matter what I do, when I enter SFO as the departure city, I can’t get those other cities and better prices to come up. I wonder if 1) the system has so many SFO options that it just can’t process the other cities 2) it doesn’t actually know that SJC or OAK are located within 100 miles of SFO.

Has anyone else seen this? Does it happen to other places outside SFO? I can give my exact search if anyone would like to see my results.

I've encoutered that same problem before as well, and have also noticed that NARROWING my searches (e.g. limiting to one airline), rather than broadening them as Orbitz suggests, often results in lower fares.

I usually use "SFO and airports within 50 miles" as my Orbitz "from" airport (I have no desire to fly out of SMF). Orbitz happily lists the cheaper flights out of SJC and OAK.

phatteus: yes. i used to use "NYC" but now i use "nyc," "lga," "ewr," and "jfk" (those airport codes stand for New York City airports, LaGuardia Airport, Newark International Airport, and John F. Kennedy (a.k.a., Kennedy) International Airport, respectively) and many times i get cheaper results by typing in the airport codes individually.

the problem with using individual airport codes is that sometimes you can get a better fare if you fly into one airport and return to another, which would be fine with me. you would assume that orbitz would try every possible iteration (and i am certainly not going to do that).

isn't that what the $5 is for?

[This message has been edited by fly co to see the yanks (edited 02-19-2002).]

[This message has been edited by fly co to see the yanks (edited 02-19-2002).]

When pricing domestic flights, I cross check to see if Orbitz is picking up all listed prices/schedules, so that is why I go back and check with ITA. Of course, they won't have any web specials that Orbitz has, but I have never bought from Orbitz prefering to get the bonus FF miles from buying directly on-line from the airline.

However, ITA has many more features than Orbitz, day before/after departures and returns, as well as destination radius of up to 300 miles.

Lesson -- Never just rely on one search engine, for they are only as good as the humans who programmed them or provided them with data!

I have started cross checking Orbitz more because I found that if you select only one airline the fare is often cheaper...... such as AA in my case than the cheapest option it had otherwise. Often these are web specials which I am not sure if this is the reason of not, but its seems to be a bigger problem during the last month.

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AA member since 1981

You might try using an airport without commercial service and see if that works for you (don't know the airports in the area well enough to suggest one, but it shouldn't be too hard to find the code for a general aviation airport).

For instance, I use TTN (Trenton, NJ) along with airports within 50 miles to pick up EWR, PHL, and ABE without getting LGA and JFK).

My experience with Orbitz hasn't been good enough to make me want to leave my travel agent. I find that when I put in CAK and airports within 50 miles (CLE), that Orbitz frequently has me returning the different airport. If I'm departing from CLE, it has me returning to CAK, and vice versa. Not very useful, since I have to drive myself to the airport!

FWIW, my experience is that NYC does not normally include EWR, just JFK/LGA. Even so, I agree with your strategy of checking on separate codes as the best way to go. You can also score an occassional deal by checking HPN, too.

I find that a lot with most travel websites (travelocity and orbitz definitely do it). I don't mind checking prices from alternate airports (PHL is my main one but the NYC ones are sometimes much cheaper), but there should be an option to 'lock' the search so that the departing airport and the returning airport is the same.
Having flights that for example depart from LGA but return to JFK are often useless. For those that either take transportation, or get dropped off/picked up, maybe it's not that difficult to use 2 different airports. But like the original poster if you drive yourself to the airport you are out of luck.

Jeff