Q1. Who needs this information?

If you have a good travel agent (an endangered species) who knows your preferences, nothing beats human intelligence, expertise, and experience. Best of all, an agent can save you lots of time and aggravation exploring alternate arrangements. However, the amount of time a travel agent can afford to spend on a single client is obviously limited by the commissions she receives, especially if you are seeking an APEX ticket, i.e., an advanced-purchase, nonrefundable, round-trip fare. If you must seek the lowest prices, you (or your assistant) will have to do-it-yourself, and this page is for you. A travel agent may not check airlines that do not participate in standard commission arrangements and sell directly to consumers, including Southwest, one of the major carriers within the USA by volume of passengers. (Although Southwest does not operate out of SBA, it does fly to both BUR and LAX.)

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• Q2. Is it really worth shopping around?

A principal motivation for this supplement is the wild gyrations in airfare prices that have become commonplace. To illustrate, the price to fly nonstop with an economy seat between SBA and SFO can vary from as low as $175 to as high as $1200. Worse, that variation can occur at different times within the same day or from one day to the next.  A typical price is around $600, greater than the typical cost of flying from SBA to some destinations on the East Coast such as Washington, New York, or Boston.

Meanwhile, the KITP budget, and most scientists' budgets, are not keeping up with inflation, so your and our ability to help finance your visits is increasingly strained.

If you are just getting started with online booking, good sources of air travel information are USA Today's Guide to Booking Online, about.com's travel section, in particular, about airtravel, or Arthur Frommer's Budget Travel.   One of the most comprehensive and up to date sources of information on all aspects of travel is Wikitravel, although, as a user-generated encylopedia like the Wikipedia, the facts there should be verified from independent sources if no references are cited.

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• Q3. Why are prices so variable?

Airfares nowadays are set by sophisticated computer algorithms based on time of day, day of the week, and projected occupancy based on consumer behavior and actual reservation patterns. Further, at any point in time, the number of seats available for sale at a certain price can be far fewer than the total number of seats remaining unsold. Today you may find that there are only two seats available at the lowest price, only to find out a week later that there are many seats available at an even lower price.

If you wish to see how much fares have varied recently between two cities in the US, go to yapta!

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• Q4. How can I not waste time looking every day for the best fare?

If you cannot find an affordable, attractive routing at an acceptable time immediately, we recommend your setting up an online "fare alert" service. Several online services will notify you by email (or RSS feed) when the price falls below your target price. These include Orbitz, Travelocity, and sidestep.   (Please let us know about similar services based outside the USA.)  However, see Q7 about timing your purchase.

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• Q5. How can I be sure to get the lowest fare?

You can't!

While we do not endorse any particular agency, there is a major one, Orbitz, that guarantees that you will pay no more on a given route than any other passenger on that route (in the same class) who purchases a ticket from them. They will monitor all purchases for your specific itinerary and send you a refund after you conclude your trip. We are not aware of another agency matching this Price Assurance Program.

Most airlines will provide the same refund (or a credit toward future travel) if you submit a request to them directly, but the burden of gathering information and providing adequate documentation that you "overpaid" is yours.   There is a relatively new service, called yapta, that will monitor particular flights for you and notify you if a lower price appears. So if you know your precise route and flights, or you have already purchased your ticket, you may want to register there.

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• Q6. Which is the best airfare search engine?

There is no one best for all travelers since different people place different values on duration of travel, number of stops, layover time, size or type of aircraft (e.g., jet vs. propeller,) airline or airline alliance (oneworld, SkyTeam, Star Alliance, etc.)   One may allow you to constrain or expand your search (e.g., maximum number of stops, alternate dates, or particular airline alliance) in ways that another does not. Typically, the ones that automatically search many other sites do not allow finely tailored searches.   Nevertheless, they may be worth trying once you have narrowed down your options, because they search the airlines' home pages. (Sometimes, an airline offers a discounted fare on their own web site that they do not release to travel agencies.)

There is one site that deserves special mention, for ITA is a firm that provides the software for many airlines and travel agencies. Their latest product, called QPX, is available online, with free configurable searches, easily and quickly sorted by different criteria, and three different styles of presentation. (They do not sell tickets, and their prices do not include any service surcharges that may be imposed by travel agencies.)

Generally, the online sites that sell tickets allow the greatest variety of search options. Some of the most popular are Orbitz, Travelocity, Expedia, and Cheaptickets. Popular search engines that are not travel agencies include farechase, kayak, sidestep, and farecast. (Some of these have sites in other countries as well.)  For an annual membership fee, cfares provides rebates on certain flights.   bookingbuddy links to nearly all of the preceding sites and more.   Sites orginating outside the USA include Momondo (Denmark but in English,) Mobissimo (sites for most European countries and India,) anyway.com (France,) Opodo (U.K.), and zuji (Asia ex-Japan.)

Be aware that none of the search engines include discount carriers such as Southwest, jetBlue, AirTran, SpiritAir, Virgin America, or small, regional airlines such as Allegiant Air, which flies between SBA and LAS two or three days per week.   Special fares requiring you to enter a promotional code are also not included in these searches. There is one site that claims to include both exceptions, airfareWatchdog, but it lists offers by departure or arrival city and does not allow searching for specific city pairs or dates.  (You can however set up email notification for pairs.)  There are sites that search many discount airlines, such as skyscanner,  no-frills-flights, and flightmapper, but since they do not include the regular airlines, it is not easy to combine discount carriers with others into a single itinerary.

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• Q7. When is the best time to purchase a ticket?

You will find much advice in books and around the internet, and we do not know which are urban myths and which are solid. The airline algorithms change over time, so it is a bit like betting on horses. There is one web site called farecast (now a Microsoft subsidiary) that attempts to help consumers predict the best time to purchase a ticket, based on pricing trends and data similar to those used by the airlines.   You can sign up for timely bulletins.

Moreover, airline promotions usually do not extend more than about 90 days into the future, so it often pays to wait.  Remember, however, that you nearly always must buy at least 21 days in advance to qualify for the lowest fares.   Set yourself a reminder on your calendar about four to six weeks in advance of travel so you don't miss out completely.

Traveling around holidays or to special events requires special attention for several reasons:

1. Some airlines have blackout dates when reduced fares are not available and when promotions and frequent flyer awards may not be used. Changing travel plans by one day can sometimes save a great deal.
2. Because flights fill rapidly, it often makes sense to purchase your ticket as far in advance as possible. See Q5 concerning how to protect yourself against price drops.
3. During peak periods, delays and missed connections are more common.  Allow extra time to change planes, especially if you are changing airlines.

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• Q8. What about all those airline consolidators I've heard about?

By all accounts, these agents are best avoided because you will have no recourse if things do not work out as planned.   Usually, these only offer last minute deals anyway.

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• Q9. I've tried all of these things, and I still cannot afford it. What else can I do?

This may well happen, especially during the summer months, because Santa Barbara is a tourist destination, and hotels and airlines hike their prices.

• If price is more important than time, then you might try arranging your own connections.   Discount airlines can save you a great deal of money if you can accommodate their schedules. Wikitravel provides a list of them in North America and around the world.  See also Q6 for search information.

For example, many airlines frequently run promotional fares to/from Las Vegas, and Allegiant flies from LAS to SBA (and SMX) for as little as $39. Although they only operate two or three days each week, you do not even have to purchase a round-trip ticket. 

• Another strategy is to travel on Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday, or sometimes on Saturday, when airfares are often cheaper than on other days. 

• You should also look for specials to nearby airports, such as LAX or BUR.  Especially if you are forced to buy a ticket at the last minute, you may happen to find a much cheaper fare to OXR or SMX than to SBA, more than offsetting the additional cost of renting a car to drive from there.

• There are airfare auctions, where you may make a bid on particular route.  You usually cannot specify the airline, the time of day or the duration of the trip, so we recommend approaching them with caution.  Two of the popular ones are priceline and Hotwire. 

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If you have any questions, please email Deborah.

last modified 8/29/08. me