International Airfare - Finding the Best Deal on International Flights

Plunkett Research refers to online travel booking as “the most successful niche of all of the world’s e-commerce efforts.” Since online travel booking is such a big business, it is no wonder that more and more booking agents are appearing online. There are literally dozens. So, when it comes time for you to book your international airfare, which one should you use? Is there any that you should avoid? Is there a booking service that consistently offers the lowest prices?

In The International Airfare Booking Experiment, we tested airfare prices on 14 different online booking services. The goal was not to find the lowest possible fare for a particular route. That would have meant employing other techniques such as choosing different departure dates, airports, lengths of stay, etc. The goal was merely to determine if any one online booking service consistently presented travelers with the lowest price on airfare compared to their competition.

Following is a list of the 14 online booking services surveyed:

Hotwire.com

Jetcombo.com (No longer available)

The Results of the International Airfare Experiment

The first thing to notice about the survey results is that the price of airfare can vary significantly from one booking service to another. We found airfare with prices that were nearly double those of other booking services.

For the 13 routes we researched, EconomyTravel.com had the highest fare on 9 routes and not once did they produce the lowest price. This did not seem very economical to us. Airfare.com gave the highest fare twice and both ClickandFly.com and OneTravel.com produced the highest fare once each.

Differently from the results above, there was not a single booking service that consistently produced the lowest fare. The number of lowest fares provided is as follows: ATI (4), Expedia (3), Jet Combo (2), Travelocity (2), Orbitz (2), Priceline (1) and ClickandFly.com (1). The reason there are more than 13 total is because two services produced the same low price on more than one occasion.

Since the concern of this experiment was the lowest international airfare of particular routes in comparison with other booking services, there were occasions in which the lowest fare meant having an extra stop or taking a longer route and/or having longer layovers. Sometimes choosing the lowest fare meant spending double the amount to time to get to your destination.

UPDATE: More than a year after conducting the original research, we went back to test prices of international airfare at the same online booking services. We noticed several changes. One, a couple of the services no longer existed. Two, price ranges among the remain booking sites and even some new ones varied little. For example, the difference in the lowest prices for round-trip airfare between Dallas and Rio de Janeiro was only $21 or less. This could reflect some fees that are included in some prices and not in others. The site that consistently showed lower fares (even though not by a lot) was Expedia.com.

There was only one type of web site were prices were significantly lower (to the tune of hundreds of dollars). Official airlines web sites seem to offer the best "deals". However, there is a caveat. These lower fares usually come with several restrictions (i.e, no refunds) and, oftentimes, include additional fees (e.g., baggage fees) that end up significanly reducing the overall savings. The extra savings you do get may not be worth the hassle of using the ticket given the numerous restrictions. If you are interested in checking the airline's prices, Idea Sparks has a list of links in their worldwide airlines directory.

Once you gather a list of current airfare prices from Expedia and the airline, we recommend you contact a trusted travel agent and let them go to work for you. Finally, use some of the secrets found in Save on Airfare Secrets to save even more. We recommend this digital book because it is filled with secrets to saving on airfare, as well as, lodging, food and ground transportation from someone who worked for 14 years in the travel industry and knows all the insider's secrets.