Airfare?

I usually just buy right off of Southwest's website and don't bother with the other airlines, but they jacked the price of the trip I was looking at by $300 over the weekend.

Recommendations?

2 adults + 1 infant (in lap) from PDX to MCO for 2 weeks for Christmas.

Thanks!

I was going to say drive, but ouch, that's 3k miles. I guess not.

I've always had good luck with Travelocity or Expedia, in the end one of them always has the best prices I've found.

The answer is NEVER Spirit!

They look cheap, but they charge you for everything including your carry on. That's right anything other than a purse costs money.

We've just had 2 different family members use them on 2 different trips and the add on fees totalled or exceeded the cost of the airfare.

I want to say I usually end up using kayak.com to search...

Which, given that it sounds like a lightweight spiel, is awesomely close to the other kind of personal watercraft...

Teleporter...

You could drive it in about 3 days... if you only wanted to see your family for 1 week instead of 2.

imirk wrote: Teleporter... You could drive it in about 3 days... if you only wanted to see your family for 1 week instead of 2.

Just gotta make sure you have the right tool for the job...

Anti-stance wrote:

imirk wrote: Teleporter... You could drive it in about 3 days... if you only wanted to see your family for 1 week instead of 2.

Just gotta make sure you have the right tool for the job...

It looks like all three of those guys are Tools, so which one is the right one?

I'll second Kayak. Using the flexible dates option and nearby airports it has makes life way easier. Plus it has a matrix with the dates and prices to make comparisons easy.

I just use them to find the flights then book through the airlines site directly, that way you get the benefit of being able to cancel and get your money back, or reschedule, unlike some of the other sites where if you miss the flight, well that's too bad.

The0retical wrote: I just use them to find the flights then book through the airlines site directly, that way you get the benefit of being able to cancel and get your money back, or reschedule, unlike some of the other sites where if you miss the flight, well that's too bad.

That's the key, never actually book through any of the third party sites. We've been caught too many times having to purchase another ticket and then fight with the 3rd party sites to get our money back when they screwed up.

The best airline search engine I've used is matrix.itasoftware.com. No direct purchase option, but as others have pointed out, you don't want that anyway. It's good enough that Google bought them a couple years ago.