At first glance, the amount of thought and care that goes into Airfarewatchdog.com may not be obvious, especially when comparing the site to the other sites that list, rather than merely search for, low airfares. Like Airfarewatchdog, these fare listing sites do the fare searching for you, and when they identify what they believe is a low fare or a fare that has gone down from the previous level, they post them.
Most of these sites list more fares than we do. However, we believe in quality over quantity. Here are eleven ways that Airfarewatchdog is different (and, we think, better) than other fare alert or fare list sites. We were trying for an even dozen, but could only come up with 11. If you think of one more, please contact us:
1. We check seat availability for the fares we list. Many newly lowered fares have little or no seat availability. We try booking seats just as you, the consumer, would and if seats are scarce we say so, or if they’re virtually non-existent, we don’t list that fare. Other sites don’t do this.
2. We list Southwest and JetBlue fares, as well as those of smaller airlines like Allegiant and USA3000. No other fare listing site lists Southwest’s or Allegiant’s fares, although a couple of them do list JetBlue now. But we’re the only site that lists and compares fares on all of these airlines.
3. We list fares one way when they can be sold for half of the lowest round-trip fare without a roundtrip purchase. Many travelers are simply going one-way or (especially for business) traveling from City A to B to C and back to A. For these folks, one way fares are the best value.
4. We list most international fares including all taxes. This is a time-consuming process, but since many of these fares carry $200-$300 in extra taxes and fees, they are deceptively low unless all taxes are shown.
5. We list airline web site-only fares. Increasingly, airlines are reserving their very best fares only for their own Web sites, and these do not appear in computer-generated third-party fare databases. We hunt down these fares and list them. No one else does this.
6. We specify when a flight is nonstop, because given a choice, that’s what most consumers want. A $129 one-way nonstop from Newark to Los Angeles may seem higher than a $211 RT with a connection in Detroit, but we list both because some people value convenience over a slightly lower fare.
7. We include all weekend fares. In general, other fare listing sites do not.
8. We shop for value, not just the lowest fare. Let’s say a New York/London fare is $400 RT on Friday for travel Monday to Thursday, November-March only and on Saturday it’s $400 RT for travel in July and August seven days a week (which actually happened not too long ago). We alert users to this very important distinction; other fare alert services do not.
9. We provide deep links to fare calendars to every domestic fare that can be purchased on Travelocity.com or Cheapair.com. These links, which no other fare listing service provides, bring you directly to the flexible date fare booking calendar for the specific fare so that you find seats more easily.
10. We show fares from every conceivable airport that’s a reasonable drive from the original search airport, all on one easy-to-navigate page. For example, our New York page has fares from LaGuardia, JFK, Newark, White Plains, and Islip, NY. But our Newark page does not list fares from JFK because although the two airports are separated by a short geographical distance, getting from Newark to JFK is in practice rather difficult.
11. We only list fares that we think are reasonable. If a fare on a particular route is in our opinion abnormally high, even if it’s gone down $10 or $20 from the previous day, we won’t list it if we believe it’s still too much to pay. Other sites list all fares without regard to price.
12. Better organization. We list domestic, international, domestic weekend, domestic international, and Canadian fares separately, under easy to use headings.
The fares we list on this site:
- Have suddenly gone down (overnight or during the day)
- Are lower than their historical average
- Are usually offered by just one or two airlines serving the route
- Are in our opinion a good deal when taking into account the route, fare restrictions, time of year, or other factors
- Have at least a few seats available at the sale price
(we check "by hand").
- Are often unadvertised and short-lived
