Travel

Priceline has the easiest tool to find airline tickets of all the major sites, but this simplicity makes it very difficult to know if the price for the airline tickets Priceline finds is low or not. This short guide will help you with a few key tips so you can find airline tickets on Priceline quickly, but still know if you are getting the best deal possible or not.

The problem with searching for an airline ticket by entering one set of dates and one set of airports is that it s difficult to tell if the lowest prices displayed on the next page are good deals or if they are closer to the maximum price for that route. Priceline has some built-in tools to help you know the difference, but you have to know how they work in order to be certain of your results.

How airfares work and how to see if you are being offered a good deal

In the computer age all airline ticket price adjustments are done automatically with no humans involved. Generally, all tickets start out with the same prices, and then as the more popular flights book up the price of the remaining tickets goes up. In order to know if you are being offered a good deal it really helps to know if these prices are higher or lower than prices on other days or using different nearby airports.

Priceline has two ways to compare

The main search screen for Priceline is very simple, but that doesn t mean the computer search they are performing is simple. Every time Priceline searches for airline tickets they automatically also search if there are lower prices on different travel dates and using different nearby airports on one or both ends. But Priceline doesn t tell you it s doing this because evidently they don t want to distract you from your original choice.

Method One: The More Ways To Save box

To the right of your original search results you ll see a yellow-framed box that says €?More Ways To Save€? at the top. This looks like an advertisement, but it s really part of your search results. The first option or two are almost always an offer to try to €?Name Your Own Price,€? which isn t nearly as easy as it used to be, and to €?Package and Save,€? which allows you to book a hotel along with your flight, always offering to €?save up to $325,€? regardless of your destination and the length of your stay. Ignore those and look below. If Priceline has found lower fares using alternate dates (but always the same length of trip) or using one or two alternate airports, it shows the details and the amount you can save by switching to those options. If it doesn t find lower airline ticket prices these options don t show up, so you know you are getting a pretty good deal.