sibley

I'm traveling ATL:CWB in late July or early August. I've gotten good at Priceline for hotel stays (thanks to BB and thereuare), and I'm toying with the idea of bidding for the airfare.

I don't care about the miles; after a long string of poor service, flight cancellations, and other frustrations, I have told Delta goodbye. Only time they'll see my smiling face is when I use award tiks. Of course, I can't use my miles for the CWB tiks. That inventory was gone many months ago.

The best fare I can get via normal channels is $1004. Is there a bidding stragegy for international travel? Any reason I shouldn't try Priceline for this? (Hotwire comes up with an error message with CWB in the mix, so that's out.)

holtju2

IMHO Priceline is great for hotel rooms and OK for car rentals. I have never been able to price a good airfare through them that I would not have been able to replicate elsewhere.

If you are an elite you could probably get 20K to 30K FF miles from a trip to Brazil.

Regis

Before relocating to Geneva, I used to live in Austin, TX and travelled frequently to Brazil. I was never able to priceline a ticket to Sao Paulo or Rio, my two preferred destinations. My attempts were always greeted with the message that my bids were not accepted, despite bidding pretty close to the fare offered directly by the airlines. My other Brazilian friends in the United States, also priceline addicts, have had the same experience. My view is that the major US airlines make little or no Latin America inventory available to opaque channels such as priceline and hotwire. And that because such routes are very profitable due to the high occupancy rates, which I would agree, given all my flights from the US to Brazil have been packed full. For international destinations other than Latin America, I have only been successful once with priceline, booking a ticket to London. I saved about USD 200 using Priceline, but in retrospect, I don't think it was worth. The ticket was from Austin to Gatwick via Newark. Problem is Priceline booked me on the first flight from AUS to EWR at 6:30 am and the flight from Newark to Gatwick left at 10:30 pm or so! I had to spend a whole unproductive day in Newark, which, at my hourly rate, cost me much more than the USD 200 I saved on the ticket. So I agree with the poster above, Priceline is great for hotel rooms, but generally not worth it for air fares, especially international ones.