Fare Search Engines: Side step?

[NandP]

Anyone ever use www.sidestep.com?

I find that prices are often higher if you use the expedia's or travelocity's of the world as oposed to going to the airlline direct... then again some airlines (swa, spirit, independance) don't subscribe to them.,...

So wht gives you the best results?

 

[Raysplus1]

I havwe used sidestep to search for fares but I have never purchased anything through them. It is a very easy search engine to use.

 

[vossjemi]

I like www.bookingbuddy.com. You type in your search features and click on all of the search engines you want to search...it has all of the airlines, expedia, travelocity, expedia, priceline, hotwire, travel jungle, cheaptickets, sidestep, quixo, mobissimo, kayak, and more. It really cuts down search time on a bunch of different sites.

 

[MNSusan]

There's an article in this month's Consumer Reports about the *new* search engines v. the The Big Three. The *new* ones are www.kayak.com, www.mobissimo.com and www.sidestep.com. The Big Three ones are travelocity, expedia, and orbitz.

Basically, the article says that although they all search well, none of them covers the entire universe of online pricing (which was news to me).

"Nevertheless, the search engines are very good at bringing you directly to the sites of travel providers, such as airlines and hotels which don't charge booking fees (the Big Three charge ticket fees ranging from $5-16). So if you find similar fares on a travel search engine and on a Big Three site, you're often better off using the search engine. Search engines are also nifty in that unlike the Big Three, they capture fares from discount airlines, such as JetBlue, as well as European sites such as Opodo, a UK travel site."