Expedia vs Orbitz vs Priceline - which airfare search is best to use?
I'm planning a trip to the mainland in January and I automatically started my search with Expedia because I am the most comfortable with them. My husband prefers Orbitz so we checked with them too. Searching for the best price, we also went to priceline to see what they had to offer.
Searching with Expedia is easy - they lay out the prices and the times with their airline comparison engine in a way that you can just glance at the results and tell exactly when the flight flies and what the price is. They first have you pick the best departure for you and THEN you go and pick the best return flight for you.
Then, we went to Orbitz - Orbitz does this thing where they lay out every possible option to fly ahead of time - so I literally had four pages of flights to go through and decide which one I wanted. So, if there was one flight to the mainland on ATA airlines, but I had to connect throught Honolulu on either Aloha, Hawaiian, or Go! airlines, then the ATA flight with Go! connector was one choice, the ATA flight with Aloha Connector was another choice, and the ATA flight with Hawaiian connector was another choice. Madness! I literally went through an entire page of flight choices without finding anything substantially different about any of the flights. Oh, and the prices were *the exact same* as the prices I found at Expedia. Ok, so forget Orbitz - too hard to read, on to Priceline.
Priceline operates like Expedia, giving you first a choice for departure, then a choice for return. ahhhh. Prices seemed practically the same, except Priceline kept telling me they weren't going to charge me a booking fee for the flights. That might have saved me $20 since I bought two tickets. However, I still think Expedia is easier to read and navigate. So I went back to Expedia and bought my tickets there. Easy.
Searching with Expedia is easy - they lay out the prices and the times with their airline comparison engine in a way that you can just glance at the results and tell exactly when the flight flies and what the price is. They first have you pick the best departure for you and THEN you go and pick the best return flight for you.
Then, we went to Orbitz - Orbitz does this thing where they lay out every possible option to fly ahead of time - so I literally had four pages of flights to go through and decide which one I wanted. So, if there was one flight to the mainland on ATA airlines, but I had to connect throught Honolulu on either Aloha, Hawaiian, or Go! airlines, then the ATA flight with Go! connector was one choice, the ATA flight with Aloha Connector was another choice, and the ATA flight with Hawaiian connector was another choice. Madness! I literally went through an entire page of flight choices without finding anything substantially different about any of the flights. Oh, and the prices were *the exact same* as the prices I found at Expedia. Ok, so forget Orbitz - too hard to read, on to Priceline.
Priceline operates like Expedia, giving you first a choice for departure, then a choice for return. ahhhh. Prices seemed practically the same, except Priceline kept telling me they weren't going to charge me a booking fee for the flights. That might have saved me $20 since I bought two tickets. However, I still think Expedia is easier to read and navigate. So I went back to Expedia and bought my tickets there. Easy.
posted by Lisa at 2:40 PM
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