When you book a flight on an airline’s website, your ticket gets issued immediately because the airline is both the seller and provider. OTAs use a global distribution system to find out what airlines are charging for flights. You’ll want to weigh the pros and cons of booking via an OTA or directly through an airline. This means any customer service will be handled by them, not Kayak. Even though a booking page pops up within the site, if you look down at the fine print, you'll see you're actually booking with another OTA, usually Priceline. However, note that if you choose the last option, you won't actually be booking with Kayak. When you’re searching for Kayak flights, you’ll notice that for some results the “View Deal” box offers several options, which may include booking direct with the airline, booking with an OTA like Orbitz or, or booking with Kayak. Should I book via Kayak, direct, or with another OTA? So, the tool doesn't actually help you get the best price, it just lets you know what the average price is for a particular route in a given month-and as we've seen, the "average" price is often much higher than a great deal price. So while you know that the average person paid around $600 for a flight from San Francisco to Amsterdam for travel in October, you don't know when the ticket was purchased (we recommend buying 3-6 months out for most trips). However, there's a major flaw in the chart: it doesn't tell you when the tickets were purchased. They’ll also often give you options with long layovers so that you can stop in a city on your way back.įor example, if we move our trip to Munich from February to June, we get several Hacker Fares. These tend to show up more for flights within the US, when you’re traveling to a destination during peak season, or if your route isn’t a common one. Hacker Fares pop up when it’s cheaper to book two one-way tickets that together make a round-trip flight, rather than booking a round-trip from a single airline. Sometimes you’ll see the words “Hacker Fare” directly under the price of a search result. But if you’re all about comfort, it’s a good feature to have. The tighter the search criteria, the less likely you are to find that $411 flight deal. You can use the presets to choose the number of nights at your destination, how many stops you’ll have, what airlines you prefer, take-off and landing times, price range, airplane cabin (economy to business), layover airports, and a whole lot more. One of Kayak’s best features is its plentiful filter options, which you can see on the left-hand sidebar above. This two-week ski extravaganza will take up two weeks in February. Let’s say you’re planning a winter trip from San Francisco to Munich, Germany, to make your way over to the Alps for some ski time. Here’s a Kayak tutorial on how to use the site to find cheap flights. This means it may not show you the absolute cheapest option.Īs we said, Kayak’s interface can be a little confusing. It does not search small OTAs: Kayak searches all the big OTAs like Expedia and Orbitz, but, unlike Momondo, it neglects smaller OTAs.The website runs advertisements: Of course Kayak is a business and needs to earn money, but the advertisements do get cumbersome after awhile.And, despite all of its customizable search options, the Kayak interface isn’t very clean. It’s slow: The biggest drawback of Kayak is that the search takes a bit longer than Google Flights.There are a few downsides to using Kayak, such as: Allowing you to filter by aircraft, flight quality, and where you have a layover: Customizable search results help you find the best trip itinerary for your needs.You can tailor the search criteria to fit your dates, trip duration, and budget, or you can select a themed search (like if you’re looking for a romantic getaway). Exploring destinations when you don’t know where you want to go: Kayak has an Explore option that allows you to look at affordable destinations on a map.However, the calendar on Google Flights offers a bit more visibility into alternate dates and prices. The ability to view flexible dates: You can search for cheaper flights up to three days before or after your intended travel dates or do a flexible month search, which searches four weeks from your earliest departure date.Here, we break down the pros and cons of Kayak and offer tips on how to use Kayak to find cheap flights. Kayak is one of the most popular travel search engines, but it’s not without its flaws. Search your dates and destination and Kayak condenses the results and lets you choose the right option for your trip. It’s a travel search engine that displays prices for flights, hotels, or rental cars. is to find the best flight deals, and while we typically recommend Google Flights, Skyscanner, and Momondo as some of the best tools for flight searching, Kayak is another solid option.
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