Dumb questions about finding the best airfare

[apagano]

Just so that you're aware, Orbitz is actually owned by a consortium of the major airlines: American, Continental, Delta, Northwest and United. They realized that people love sites like Expedia and Travelocity where you can see all the available flights on one screen, so they banded together to compete. That's the reason Orbitz offers special fares not available through other sites. There has been some controversy about this in the news, and I believe that Southwest was suing claiming that Orbitz was artificially inflating SW fares in order to make other airfares look good by comparison. I'm not trying to steer you one way or the other (I booked my own Disney trip through Orbitz), but it's nice to know exactly who you're dealing with when buying tickets online.