From Zeroasterisk

Summary

Research, research, research - book early - and once committed, don't look again so you don't get frustrated.

Try the following sites. If adventurous, try wholesale-fares.com and let me know if you had any problems...

Airline Ticket Search Sites

• air-gorilla.com - looks cheap and good
• wholesale-fares.com - still doing research on this one... so cheap as to cause concern.
  
  • Better Business Bureuo report
• travelzoo.com - search multiple ticket search sites at once

Found Documentation

Info on Ticket Pricing

Source : Google Answers : [1] Subject: Re: What is the cheapest way to fly when you don't care when? From: silver777-ga on 07 Jul 2004 04:55 PDT

Hi Severisth,

I work for Qantas. I don't do airfares, I balance aircraft for your safety, but I can tell you this much.

There is a group referred to as Yield Management. It is an interesting area, as airfares are based on a passenger kilometre rate formula as long as your arm, in 10 point text. Bottom line is this: They look at seasons, events, competition, months, weeks and days of the week. The demand over these times is then calculated into the percentage of airfares available over a given route, day etc. back to the season. If you have comprehended that so far then please read further.

The number of X fares available on Tuesday on your route, on that particular flight may be 12. On Friday that number may reduce to 4, due to historic demand. The aircraft is not fully booked, but the cost of available airfares will increase with the demand. The closer you book to departure time, the higher the airfare.

So, let's simplify this for you. The best deal for you for uncommited time is to simply book and pay as far in advance as you can. Forget trying to consider that agents are paid are comission. Their comission is paid nett of the wholesale price as I understand. This means that you, the customer is not disadvantaged. An agent may choose to discount, but will do so at their cost, or as a contra deal with an airline if the agent is big enough to command a deal through their volume of past sales records.

Book and pay ahead. Also consider the overbooking noshow factor. We overbook by up to 3% depending on noshow factors and yield. There is always a minimal chance that you will be "bumped" due to overbooks. The hierachy of offload depends on the real day circumstance. You may be the last to check-in on a late notice disrupted flight. Then you will be first off. If the disruption is known hours ahead, then offloads will occur firstly on last booked, then platinum, gold, silver and even Zircon members of frequent flyers booked. Chairman's Lounge Members are last to be offloaded. Anyone from the Qantas Club membership is irrelevant. My next door neighbours dog has membership there, so don't start barking in the lounge. Anyone can do that, and it will ensure you a seat at the rear of the plane in a centre seat surrounded by 2 Summo wrestlers.

Decide what it is you want. Dollar saving, or service or both. Qantas can not be of assistance to you intra-country in The States. My only parting words I wish to share is that United Airlines just happened to employ some very grumpy flight attendants last week on a flight from Sydney to Los Angeles. My close friend was aboard.

BOOK AND PAY AHEAD IF YOU ARE ON A BUDGET, regardless of the airline of your choice.

Kind regards, Phil