I need travel help re: booking multi-city flights using websites

[pjlla]

Hope my title wasn't too confusing!

I am looking to book a multi-city trip next summer. It would be Boston, MA (or Manchester, NH) to Albuquerque, NM to Santa Ana, CA, to Flagstaff, AZ and then home again to Boston or Manchester.

I have put these cities/dates into the more "popular" travel websites (travelocity, orbitz, cheaptickets) and found reasonable flights.... but the cheapest I have come up with is about $700/pp. I suppose that isn't too bad considering how much traveling is involved... but I was hoping to keep it to about $500-$600 per person max. Hotwire doesn't do one way travel or multi-city destinations.

Any experience out there with this sort of thing? Any other good websites for this kind of thing that I haven't mentioned? ANY OTHER SUGGESTIONS? I REALLY want this trip to happen like this... but if all else fails it will be directly to ABQ and home again. And that would mean missing Disneyland and the Grand Canyon... and that would make me sad!!

And am I searching WAAAY too early? This is for a July 2005 trip. Travelocity was unable to do a search with those dates.... I figured it was too early. But the other sites all gave me firm times and prices. Thanks for any help out there!!........P

 

[TammiMcMan]

I think you are probably searching a little bit eary. Normally, you won't see airlines offering discounts this far in advance. You might also want to check on pricing them as one-ways. Sometimes you can find the smaller discount airlines that service one or two of your destinations. For instance, Southwest has flights from Manchester to Albuquerque and they have some very low fares that come out a few months before travel. You might also want to have a travel agent check for you. I'm pricing a multi-city for my DD right now, but it only includes 3. So far, if I price them all as one-ways, it's about $50 less expensive.

Tammi

 

[CarolA]

You are probably a little early for discount fares.
Also, if your booking uses more then one airline, all bets are off... I swear it gets more expensive then!

Also, think creative!

You might be better off buying lots of tickets then one giant ticket. The one giant ticket tends to be hard to find at a discount.

I know that you can to Manchester to Albuqurqe on SW as a one way. So could you do the others the same way?

You could also look at one ticket that goes Manchester/Albuquerque with a return from Flagstaff to Manchester.

Flagstaff and Santa Ana are two of your problems. WHy are you flying into Santa Ana for Disneyland? What about Long Beach and/or LAX? Are there other airports you could use instead of Flagstaff. (Unless a small airport has one of the discount carriers, the majors will stick it to you!)

 

[safetymom]

I agree with the buying of several tickets. You would have to carry your luggage to the next carrier but you could save yourself lots of money. Open jaw tickets tend to cost more so I would start breaking the trip down into segments and try pricing it that way.

 

[tina95]

I was able to get a good deal, well I think it is, with expedia. We will be going from Dallas to Washington DC than to Orlando and than back to Dallas. This trip starts the 18th of Jan. The price I paid was $168 per person total.

 

[pjlla]

I guess I thought by doing Expedia or something like that I WAS booking lots of one-way tickets. They are on different airlines... doesn't that qualify as one-way tickets? Guess I'll have to do some searching.... Glad to hear about the Manchester to ABQ availability.... I'd way rather fly out of MHT than BOS any day!!....P

 

[pjlla]

Originally posted by CarolA
Flagstaff and Santa Ana are two of your problems. WHy are you flying into Santa Ana for Disneyland?

I was just going by a map of the area and it looked like that was the closest airport.... but I have done some price searches for LAX and Long Beach... Didn't see a big savings (actually, no savings at all!).........................P

 

[CarolA]

The sites you are using are not really going to try and find you a deal on this. They lump the whole thing together and just price it out. A lot of time that comes out higher. They don't really look at it as a bunch of one way flights.

Also, sales are much more common to LAX or even Long Beach then Santa Ana. YOu can fly SW from ABQ to LAX for example and not to the other airport.

You are going to have to bird dog this one manually. I would go to the discount carriers sites and see what you can find, (SW, JetBlue, AirTran) You might also look on the America West site.

 

[sk!mom]

Have you considered talking to a travel agent just to see what they can come up with?
DH and I are doing a multi-city trip this year and a travel agent found us a much better deal than we were finding.
This was our first time in years to use an agent but she ran down a good fare.

 

[my3kids]

You could book you main ticket directly from whatever airline flies into your area....just do it as a multi leg ticket, which should be cheaper than a bunch of one way tickets. We got one last yeat flying into Albuquerque and the return was leaving from Tucson to back home. For the flights while out west, look at Southwest and America West. Southwest always has cheap fares between some of their western cities. They usually feature a different city each month. On these sales one way is about $39-$59 a ticket.

 

[pjlla]

Thank you all SO MUCH for all of the helpful advise! I am taking it ALL into consideration and will let you all know what I find!......P

 

[Chicago526]

Originally posted by sk!mom
Have you considered talking to a travel agent just to see what they can come up with?
DH and I are doing a multi-city trip this year and a travel agent found us a much better deal than we were finding.
This was our first time in years to use an agent but she ran down a good fare.

I agree. I'm a TA and do multi-city tickets rather often. We can sugest routes, alternate airports, dates, times, and general good advise to help get the cost down.

Actually, we've been rather competitive lately with internet rates for plain round-trip tickets too! It never hurts to check with a good TA, we'll always give you a quote, no charge!

 

[pjlla]

Well... I spent a hunk of time today online trying to figure out this trip. The lowest price for airfare I found yesterday was $655/pp.... this was for MHT to ABQ to SNA to FLG to MHT (over the course of about 10 days).... not TOO bad, but I was looking for less.

I tried booking it as individual one-way trips today and found it to be much pricier.... I came up with $692/pp.

BUT now I am considering this.... MHT to ABQ... then getting a rental car to drive to to the Grand Canyon... then flying FLG to SNA and SNA to MHT. THat would probably save about $400 in airfare.... but might end up costing us that in rental car fees!!
Not to mention the fact that it will re-arrange our trip and we will end up flying from CA to NH, rather than from AZ to NH... both are long trips, but I was trying to shorten the ride home as much as possible.

I do have a travel agent in the family.... maybe I will give her a call and let her give it a try. And I will keep an eye on the airfares... Southwest doesn't have their schedule out for July yet. They are only up to April 1st so far. I have signed up for the emails from Southwest and AmericaWest. Any other discount airlines out there that go to ABQ? Song? Jet Blue? Spirit?
Thanks to you all for your help and suggestions...............P