Do you know of a website where I can run a search of flights leaving my area by price? For example: I want to fly out of JFK on 12/28. Where is the cheapest place to fly from a particular airport? The website would have to show multiple carriers to multiple round trip destinations as a way to compare prices and destinations. I am looking for last minute flights to nowhere in particular as long as it is cheap.
Thanks!
I also start at Kayak and work from there. You can also set up email price alerts. I don't buy tickets until I've watched prices for awhile and have an idea what a good price is.
John, You might have a look at Hipmunk, as it provides options to display searches according to Agony, Price, Duration, etc. I always check the airline websites as well. Cheers!
Thank you all. I will take a look at these and see if I can make them work for me.
John, for several years now I've been using itasoftware.com which I learned about from the Helpline. You can't purchase through them but I prefer to deal with the actual airline anyway so that if there are any problems they'll take care of us. I realize you probably (hopefully) have your tickets already for your 28.12.12 trip but if you don't, it's a great site for quick and easy comparisons.
I use http://matrix.itasoftware.com/ and their calendar function. It shows a couple of months' calendar with the prices noted day by day. The info lets you spot some days that airfares are sometimes dramatically different than the other days of that month.
skyscanner.com can be very useful, especially in Europe.
John, We used www.hipmunk.com but I also checked www.kayak.com
Excellent idea to just take a cheap flight out to see something new. One thing to be careful of. I've noticed that the cheapest flights with changes generally have nearly impossible layovers. But from JFK you should be able to find some really great non-stops to some very interesting places. Look for off season places like Russia in December. Actually Moscow isn't a bad idea. Red Square is great when its surrounded by snow and the river is frozen over. January 7 I believe is Orthodox Christmas and that's pretty interesting as well. AND, the 5 star hotels charge 3 star rates. Look at Aeroflot. I don't believe they have crashed a plane in a couple of years so they may be doing better and I remember their rates out of JFK were really, really, really cheap..