Use Kayak to Compare Flight Fares

I’m planning a trip to Italy in the Spring, as since last fall I’ve been watching the price of airfare for flights into Rome.

It’s been ugly!  (Translation:  expensive.)  While there would be the occasional “special” fare, by the time all the fees and extra charges were added on, the price was right back up in the $1200 range.

January always seems to be a time of fare slashing, as airlines try to stimulate travel purchases by all those people who overspent during the holiday season, so while other friends were anxious to make a ticket purchase, I was pretty relaxed about the whole thing.

Then the New Year arrived, and I knew that I had to step up and be a little more watchful in my fare search.  Still the fares were hovering around $1100, and I really felt they’d drop lower.

The search was on!  One of my favorite ways to search and keep an eye on comparative fare information is with Kayak. 

Kayak is not a ticket selling site.  It collects the data from a variety of airline, travel, and aggregator sites, and then present you the information in whatever order your prefer — airline, price, departure time, arrival time, or number of stops.

To use Kayak, you enter your travel destination and dates (it allows you to indicate if you are flexible on your dates), and then click on search.  You can further narrow your search by airline, departure, neighboring airports, etc.  For a preliminary search I recommend keeping your parameters broad, and as you continue your search to keep narrowing.

The prices shown for tickets include taxes and fees (at least all the ones that I checked on did), and indicate where you can get the best price.  By searching Kayak every day, I was able to scoop up a fare for under $850 – a good price in my book.

Play around a little on the Kayak site before you need to book your flight, and you’ll get a feel for how the site works, as well as what parameters matter to you.  It save me a lot of money, and I think you’ll be pleased with what it has to offer.

Italy — here I come!

NOTE:  Before scooping up that SUPER LOW fare, look at any connections you need to make, along with the time you have to make it.  I could have shaved another $50 off my fare by making a different connection.  But those connections were 1:30 in JFK and :57 minutes in Atlanta — in my mind both absurdly short periods of time for those airports.  Saving money on a ticket is great, but not when you aren’t going to make it to your destination close to scheduled.

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