How to Save on Flights from West Coast?

[Anal Annie]

Annie, while it is still early, I was hoping you would come back to the Transportation board and give us a review/TR of you flights and any issues you encountered.

I'll try to remember! I do have 6 months of senility to go thru tho!!

(PS) In the meantime I could recount our experiences with Air France 2 years ago.

 

[Scotch]

My plan = buy one way via SWA when it releases the December seats because I should have Rapid Reward points to cover ~ 3 of the 4 tickets; and I'm open re airline for the other one way flights. I've been monitoring the fares of the legacy airlines that have been released during these past weeks and just caught a drop on United -- $167 one way MCO-PDX for the 30th! It has a great schedule (though I expect it to change at least once this far out). The fare has been hovering around $230 to $260; it dropped once this weekend (I got an alert via Yapta) but by the time i checked that fare was gone. This morning I got an update via my Kayak fare alert and discovered the $167 rate; and that rate was still available this afternoon.

I sort of prefer flying home on the 31st just to get an extra day at WDW, and I'm tempted to cancel this fare (I have 24 hours) and wait for the 31st fares to drop. But the extra night's onsite lodging for that period is and I'm not sure I can justify the additional night's stay. Anyway, I have 24 hours to cancel without a fee. If experienced folks here think I can do better by waiting some more, please let me know!

 

[Greysword]

In general United seems to have the best fares between PDX and MCO, as well as numerous flight time options. I'm apprehensive on United, though, because their customer service is pretty low in comparison to Southwest, Alaska, Frontier, American and Delta. As such, I'll usually pay more to not fly United, especially since the difference per person is $50 or less much of the time.

Otherwise, United is a good option with a solid schedule and price.

 

[Scotch]

In general United seems to have the best fares between PDX and MCO, as well as numerous flight time options. I'm apprehensive on United, though, because their customer service is pretty low in comparison to Southwest, Alaska, Frontier, American and Delta. As such, I'll usually pay more to not fly United, especially since the difference per person is $50 or less much of the time.

Funny, we'd pay more not to fly American for our vacations because of service issues we've had with them in the past several years. Actually, after the most recent issue DH has said "absolutely no" to AA flight for this year end Orlando trip. (AA cancelled our LAX to Honolulu flight the Saturday before Xmas due to mechanical problems and its initial response was "we can get your family on another flight 4 (!) days later on the 26th" and we only got onto another airline's flight on the next day after a lot of insistence on my part and multiple calls + AA refused to comp the checked luggage fee on the other airline even though we had used the most expensive 45,000 miles one way flex award that was supposed to comp at least one checked bag per person.) Southwest and Alaska service rocks. I rarely fly Delta; I think I've flown more on UA than Delta and I haven't had any service issues. (Knock on wood!)