Buying Airfare – the Art of Comparing Apples and Oranges

I’ve decided that buying airfare in 2018 is a bit like trying to prepare your own taxes.  It requires time, patience, the need for good glasses to read the fine print and a large dose of hope that when you click “purchase” you’ve actually bought what you need.

In the old days, buying airfare was easy – I just called my travel agent and she handled everything. (boy do I miss those days!)

In the days since then, with the internet it became very easy to shop around all on your own and buy at what you felt was a good price.

But today, buyer beware is the true order of the day.  What you may think is a fair price is only a small portion of what you need to pay in the long run.  And it seems like you get emails every day with “Great Low Fare” notices.

So let’s take a look at this in more detail.  We’ll use these two examples:

Example 1:  International Travel

BUT – what about baggage fees?  And what are the seats like, will you need extra room?  Can you select your seat?  All of the above fares are in  basic economy .  And this is the kicker – the fine print is all important.

Here’s what it means for the fares above:

But wait – you say!  “I’ve heard of great deals to Europe on the new WOW Airline”.

Yes.  You have.

How do they stack up?  See for yourself:

FIRST – you have to add a night as they do not fly on the 24 ^th .  So now, you need to add a hotel room.

So hmmm, where are those low low fares????  The ones advertised at $350.00 round trip…..

I couldn’t find them.  And the catch is, they only have to have just a very few seats available at those fares, so if you don’t buy immediately, you’ll likely never see them again.

AND –  the above fares are only for your seat  and 1 carry on item that must fit under your seat.  You are not allowed any overhead bin space.

What happens if you want to check a bag or reserve a seat?

Oh – and I failed to mention that both flights have a stop over in Reykjavik – with a layover of 12 hours average.

So much for a bargain flight!  But it did get me to spend about 30+ minutes on their site looking at different dates and routes…….arghhhhh!

Ok, let’s move on to the next scenario.

Example 2:  Domestic Travel

So that’s not so bad, right?  All non stop.  All from more local airports.

But that’s not the final price.  No surprise, right?

Here’s the real deal:

So how can you save a HUGE amount of time when checking all this out for yourself and planning your next trip?  Here’s my best recommendation:

First,  use sites like  www.momondo.com,  www.kayak.com  or  www.expedia.com  to scope out airfares and see base pricing.  (I was recently shown this site for airfare deals:   https://scottscheapflights.com/  but I’m not very enthused.  To get the  really  great alerts it’s a pay for service.)

 Second,  check out the baggage and seat pricing fees here 



Third,  be sure to watch the fares and track them over a period of time – see how they change to give yourself peace of mind when you finally do “book ‘em”.

And then, you can get on with the fun part planning what to bring and deciding if you’ll extend your trip, etc.

Happy Travels!  I’ll try to keep more info like this coming.

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