With Thanksgiving break fast approaching, many students are flying home for the holidays. But ticket prices can be a daunting purchase. The prices students have to pay vary widely with location seeming to play little factor. Sophomore Marissa Eckman is paying roughly $300 for a flight to Castro Valley, Calif. Junior Conor Donato is paying $200 to go to San Diego. And both students booked through Southwest Airlines. Freshman Gavin Bullock is choosing to fly home to Snohomish, Wash. via Delta Airlines and his flight is around $160. Junior Cody Ahlgrimm has a $200 round-trip flight to Carolina but insists the “intrinsic value is priceless.”
There are several options to book a flight. Some popular travel sites are Kayak.com, Priceline.com, AlaskaAirlines. com, Travelocity.com, Southwest.com, Orbitz.com and Skyscanner.com. From comparing many different websites, it became apparent that non-stop flights would actually be cheaper than scheduling a flight with a stop.
But sometimes that option is not available when scheduling. Destination also seems to have an impact on what airlines are the cheapest options.
For instance, according to Kayak.com the farther east you go, the more times Delta Airlines shows up as the cheapest airfare there is. Farther west, Alaska and American Airlines show up about an equal amount of times and have very similar prices.
Kayak.com proved to be a great website to help find, compare and book flights. It lists just about every airline and its price with the outlier being the fact that it does not include Southwest Airlines prices on its search site. Do not forget that scheduling a flight sooner can also help bring down prices for flights. Booking in advance can be a good way to save money and keep the prices at a minimum.
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