Cheaper Flights

I recently purchased a ticket through Travelocity, and though I very much like the site, I noticed a $5 booking fee in the ticket price breakdown. This troubled me, so when I was shopping for a flight to Miami recently, I decided to do a little comparison.

First I searched for the cheapest flight I could find on Travelocity (it happened to be with American Airlines), then I went to that airline's website and found the exact same flight. This was easy enough because Travelocity gives you the flight numbers before you purchase the ticket. The flight on aa.com was net $30 cheaper than on Travelocity, and I got 1,000 frequent flyer miles for using their website to book the ticket.

I have had some friends do this since, and they have saved between $10-$50 on domestic flights, though they still needed travel planning sites to compare fares between airlines easily.

So it seems the airlines are trying to cut the aggregators' profit out of their top line. Sounds great to me, but it may lead to a situation where the comparison sites have to find a different way to create revenue or a situation where fewer airlines release their fares to these aggregators. Some notable airlines absent from any of the travel planning sites are JetBlue, Southwest, Independence Air and Song.

Neither would be good for consumers, but use the loophole while it lasts!