Don, a little help if you can
Eurotripper
Posted on: Wed, 02/07/2008 - 16:35
I’m trying to book tickets for a Dec.-Jan. trip and found a great fare via ITA, SFO-DUS 12/21-1/5 for $705 on KLM. I’ve searched Kayak, Mobissimo, Farecompare, Booking Buddy (Travelocity, Expedia, Vayama, Sidestep, One travel, and Farecast). The fare shows up on Farecast, saying it found it on KLM.com. However, when I am redirected to the KLM site and enter the U.S. as my country of departure it sends me to the NWA site and the fare is over $1000. DO you have any ideas, or should I just chalk this up as one of those ITA mystery fares?
Farecompare also shows this fare — valid from October, in fact. So it’s not just a made-up fare they’ve posted out of the millions of possible routings and fares in the world, just to mess with you (although it feels like that!). It’s the airlines that provide the info to construct the fares. What’s likely happening is one or more segments are sold out on those dates, or fare rules have changed, or fuel increase and it can’t be confirmed at the lower price, etc. It happens to everyone occasionally (recently to me with Orbitz).
Orbitz found $718 total with it’s +/- 3 day flex search, but not ‘til outbound 23rd or 24th. However, when I clicked through to the next step, I got the dreaded “this fare is no longer available due to changes in airline availability….”
I found your orignial dates for $824 with ATIFlights if that interests you.
I tried a couple of non-US sites to see if it’s there; no luck.
You might sign up for alerts with Farecompare. It was $602 back on 23 June according to their fare history. These could be short-lived sale fares, or mistake fares, so if I was booking for myself, I’d probably give it a couple of weeks and see if it happens again—and be ready to book at moments notice.
Hopefully Don will post soon.
My opinion is that this might not be a real fare, or that it is sold out. If you go to Orbitz, it’s visible at first (slightly higher price), but when you click through it’s gone.
However, on Lessno.com you can get a routing that appears to be on KLM/NWA (SFO-PDX-AMS-DUS) for $868 total for your dates.
Note that if you could somehow circumvent the credit card issue, you can buy the NWA/KLM flight for 590 Euros total on www.opodo.de which is about $935.
I have a hunch that if you can move the departure a day or so, and if you consider CGN and FRA, in various combinations, something relatively cheap will pop up, but it will be by chance.
Damn I guess the days of cheapo winter flights are gone eh?
Well, this is at Christmas time, so you can’t judge by that. But I do think the very best deals are probably over.
Thanks for all the help. I think I can be pretty flexible about dates, but am a little afraid to book something and then have unforeseen teaching commitments ruin my plans. My ultimate destination is Madrid, so am just looking for the cheapest way to get there via anywhere as long as I don’t end up with an itinerary that makes one of the legs 30 hours long (not including the wherever-MAD leg). I found $797 SFO-FRA 12/19-1/5 on Delta with Vayama and might jump on it before it’s too late. Damn my fear of commitment