Travelocity.com is good, but you generally get the best deals through the actual airline websites.

Southwest is great. Too bad they don't fly to or from Atlanta. :( It's so stupid that they don't have any flights from one of the biggest cities in the US but, then again, Atlanta's air traffic is such a clusterf&$# that it would probably mess up Southwest's notorious on-time arrivals and departures.

I go directly to the airline sites. Southwest is usually the most flexible. If you purchase a ticket at least 14 days in advance you can get the cheapest rate. I've also had good service when I've needed to cancel/change a flight reservation.

I also sign up for the various airlines' weekend specials, just to keep track of the rates.

I justed booked a flight on United. "Nick" helped me out. "Nick" thinks Jessica is spelled Jessick. "Nick" doesn't speak English very well.:(

And to that that one step, or two, further:
Always check and re-check all the information that you put in prior to hitting send.

Not sure if United does this, but several airline now charge you if you use a real person over their web site.

And as I found out just the other week, some are now charging you to use curb side check in. Even with e-tickets.

However if you do have e-tickets and you checked in/confirmed on-line, some have free self-serve baggage inside.

United does have a $5 non-refundable service fee if you call a reservations center. Not sure if they've since upped the price.

Even though I wasn't technically part of the Reservations team, we were all trained to take calls in the event the call center got slammed. I don't know how many times I helped a customer build an itinerary and as I'm about 3/4ths done with the PNR and I'm reviewing the fares and fees, they get pissy over the $5 and end up hanging up because they didn't know about the no-service fee if you booked online.

It happened all the time. If you got a really evil RSSR and you totally pissed them off, they'd purposely go into system and hold enough space in that fare class for a few minutes, so when the customer went online to build the same itinerary, they'd have no choice but to choose space in the next higher fare class.

Whenever I fly, I check in online as soon as it hits 24 hours before my flight. I'm really anal about my seats and don't want to risk losing them. I only fly Continental and Hawaiian these days, and Continental has a convenient bag drop for online check-ins. I'm Premier on Hawaiian so everything's pretty much convenient. ;)

Actually, United's Website kept giving me the price of $228.10(including taxes, fees, etc), until I went to confirm, then it came up with $268.10. So I called customer service, and they gave it to me for the $228.10 price. Even if they end up charging me $5 extra, I still saved $35.

Thanks for the replies. I will be flying to Durango Co -small airport with limited carriers but hopefully southwest goes there. Time to start searching.

From: http://www.durangogov.org/services/airport.html#airline

Commercial air carriers include:

• Delta Airlines, 800-221-1212
• United Express, 800-241-6522
• U.S. Airways, 800-235-9292
• Southwest Charter, 800-525-0892

Enjoy your trip!

I'm a big fan of skyauction.com, but I find that their best deals tend to be for international. I bought a round trip ticket to Australia for over the Christmas holidays (peak season, since its so warm there!) and got it for like $750 when other websites were quoting me $2000 and more.

My brother told me about a site called, www.studentuniverse.com . Apparently if you are a student or faculty they have discounted travel tickets there. I haven't done much snooping but thought I would pass it on to everyone.

Thanks Jon!

Lucky you. Beautiful area. Enjoy. Do you have to fly through Denver?