Skyscanner

Skyscanner is a search engine that looks up fares from other web sites. They don't sell the actual tickets.

Hi,

Thanks for your replies, but I am still unsure how this works because I see a price of $298.00 from Milwaukee to Frankfurt, for 4 people. When I go to the airlines site it has the price as $3,548.00. Do you know how to use this site?

Thanks again

So, it might have been possible to get that low of a price from the airlines, but I was not quick enough to book? Or do you think skyscanner made a mistake and posted an incorrect price?

Many of these search sites use "cached" information, which means the posted prices might be old by the time you find them. Sometimes the window of opportunity is only minutes, and if you miss it, that fare is gone. Really good fares are usually very limited in number.

Here is a good (and recent) writeup on flight search sites from the NY Times:

http://frugaltraveler.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/16/click-it-and-ticket-booking-a-flight-the-frugal-way/

Most of the European sites (especially that include low cost airlines) seem to use cached information. When you click on it, you get real time information. Most of the time it's not good news but rarely as bad as what you saw.

In my recent searches, I've clicked on an under $50 one-way flight from Copenhagen to Hamburg and up popped a $750 flight. That's a fairly significant change. I didn't lose much time, however. For me, it just means I have to keep looking.