Economy Class: Where Time Is Money
— -- Today’s travel world can present the unpleasant choice of saving time or saving money.
The Internet was supposed to open up a whole new world of bargain travel opportunities. In some ways, it has.
On the flip side, the complexity of deals, the profusion of vendors and the changing nature of the Internet travel world give us a lot of information with too little time to locate and analyze it. It’s not an accident that so many deals come with “Buy Now!” provisions.
Everyone and their travel agent’s dog wants to convince you that their discount is the best one out there. If you haven’t figured it out yet, I’m here to tell you that no single site has the best deals on everything. I’ll go even further: No air travel bargain site has the best ticket prices on every airline, every route, all the time — not even mine.
This can come from a profusion of factors. There are partnership deals that cause a vendor to promote one airline over the others, even when their prices are not the lowest. Partnership deals can work in consumers’ favor, if the travel vendor acquires negotiated fares or special benefits in return for the added hype. In other cases, you’re getting a bum steer.
Are Multiple-Airline Sites the Answer?
Should you trust an airline site with direct access to inventory or a site advertising multiple airline fare searches? Don’t trust either one absolutely. Each system has its advantages, but the airline industry does not have a sterling record in offering consumers’ the lowest fares; the multiple-airline booking sites almost always have preferred carriers. And there are other glitches that can get between you and travel bargains.
There is also a huge lack of inclusion of the low-fare carriers. If, for example, your cheapest ticket from Dallas to the West Coast is two Southwest tickets that cannot be sold as one ticket due to the absurd, lingering effects of the Wright Amendment, no major booking site is going to tell you about it. The Wright Amendment limits flights from Dallas on planes carrying more than 56 passengers to routes within Texas and to adjacent states.
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