Planning your Travel - Resources for Finding a Flight, Selecting a Seat, Slipping through Security, and Cruising through Customs

[porcupine]

The short answer is you will get the level of service you are willing to pay for.  I have yet to see a single rant that shows the writer actually understands that.  Most flyers buy the cheapest ticket they can find, and then feel they should get treated substantially better and are at liberty to bellyache about it when they don't get it.   There is a disconnect here.  The result of always buying the cheap ticket is the level of service comes down to match the fare, both in the immediate case and in the long term.  

Over in another forum, Rocks started the fascinating discussion about airline economics.  The bolded sentence from johnb quoted above got me to thinking, how do people choose their flights?  There are so many options.  Do most people really choose the cheapest seat?  I don't.

I start by looking on Travelocity or Expedia for what flights are available to a given destination on a given day.  I search on WAS (all Washington area airports) for departures.  Then, I arrange my search by departure time, and usually filter it for nonstop or one stop.

After I get a sense for which airlines depart from which airports at what times of day, I'll do a search on seatguru.com to see what equipment is flying, and how the seats are arranged.  I'll often go to individual airline websites to find even more details.

The point of all this research is that I don't necessarily want the cheapest seat.  I want a reasonably priced seat that departs at a reasonable time (from DCA, IAD, or BWI, in that order of preference) and gets me to the destination reasonably quickly.

For example, last time we flew to Montreal, I found an insanely inexpensive deal on Porter Air - something below $100, I believe.  But, the flight went to Toronto first and had something like a six hour layover before heading to Montreal.  When I'm going somewhere for just a few days, it isn't worth it to spend half a day on each end hanging around in an airport.

Another example: for our Fiji trip, I found a reasonable first class fare (low four digits).  I decided to play around with the dates.  Every other departure/return date I checked offered the same flight at twice the price.  So even though I wanted to spend a little longer in Fiji, I stuck with the original plan. $X was not too much for me to pay.  $2X was way too much.

A final example: for our upcoming trip to Iceland, I saw that the nonstop options were limited to Icelandair and Wow air.  The latter is a lot less expensive, but it departs from BWI, offers economy class only, and charges $60+ for the first checked bag, and well over $100 for the second.  Given that we're going in winter and planning on doing some outdoor activity, we absolutely need to check bags (we're taking a lot of stuff).  Icelandair offers two checked bags for free and a premium economy class in which only two people are seated in a row designed for three.

I also checked Icelandair's website, which gave a calendar view with prices - so I could see which days of the week cost more and which cost less.  So even though I paid for premium economy, I chose the least expensive days of the week to fly.  All told, we're paying a little more (but not much more) than we would have paid on Wow Air, and departing from a more convenient airport.

So, how do you choose?  What factors are important to you, and why?  What other considerations do you have?  What websites do you recommend checking?  What are your tricks and tips for finding your preferred itinerary?

[mr food]

According to the WSJ, Tuesday is the best day to book air travel. The article is behind a pay wall so I can't post it.

[dracisk]

In addition to checking for overly long layovers, I always check for layovers that seem like they could be too tight if I need to change planes. I usually don't like to have less than an hour layover (for domestic flights, anyway).

I don't usually check seatguru.com, although my flights over the last couple of years haven't been very long. If I was flying to Fiji I might be more likely to investigate equipment. When I went to Bangkok a few years ago I didn't investigate equipment and ended up in a seat that didn't recline for the 14-hour flight from NRT to IAD. I'm not usually a big seat recliner, but it might have been nice to have that option at some point during those 14 hours (just a couple of degrees!).

I'm usually unwilling to leave very early in the morning, although I once got to IAD from Silver Spring for a 7am non-stop flight to SFO for a good fare on Virgin, and I still think that was worth it.

I'm also usually unwilling to have more than one layover, although I did once right after law school use a free Southwest voucher for an itinerary that was something along the lines of BWI-SAT-LAX-OAK-SEA. That was insane. :-)

Some people think that the fares offered in online searches change depending on your browsing history (http://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/columnist/mcgee/2013/04/03/do-travel-deals-change-based-on-your-browsing-history/2021993/), but others aren't so sure (http://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/columnist/seaney/2013/04/30/airfare-expert-do-cookies-really-raise-airfares/2121981/). I haven't noticed this in my own searching.

[Ericandblueboy]

I've never used Priceline to buy airline tickets because the lowest fare isn't the most important thing to me.  But I don't bother with Seatguru either.  If the flight is longer, then I buy premium economy or economy plus.

[Keithstg]

I've never used Priceline to buy airline tickets because the lowest fare isn't the most important thing to me.  But I don't bother with Seatguru either.  If the flight is longer, then I buy premium economy or economy plus.

I end up looking at the following things when booking a flight

1. Is the flight direct - unless it's impossible to get to my destination from either Reagan or Dulles without a layover, I will pay a premium for a direct flight. I generally use Expedia to get the largest number of airlines in one go, but will check individual airlines for international travel.

2. How are the options rated for on-time performance (I use flightaware to review on time %)

3. What's the carrier - I am airline agnostic nowadays, although I try my best to avoid American and will try to fly Virgin America from IAD to the west coast. Seems like chasing points or perks in a pre-check and global entry world are pretty diminished

4. What type of plane are they flying - for longer flights I will look at seatguru to determine configurations and look for the newest options

I've gotten this whole process down to about ten minutes or so, and when I don't book my own travel have a handy note spelling out these options. Has worked well thus far.

[lion]

3. What's the carrier - I am airline agnostic nowadays, although I try my best to avoid American and will try to fly Virgin America from IAD to the west coast. Seems like chasing points or perks in a pre-check and global entry world are pretty diminished

Have you used pre-check or global entry? Curious if the time benefit is worth the cost and necessary advance paperwork.

[johnb]

So, how do you choose?  What factors are important to you, and why?  What other considerations do you have?  What websites do you recommend checking?  What are your tricks and tips for finding your preferred itinerary?

Wow.  You really go at it!  I'm impressed.

My main recommendation for flight searches is a little-known site called ITA matrix. or matrix.ITAsoftware.com.   ITA was started by a bunch of MIT computer scientists, to develop high speed and high information airline search tools -- they were the original developer of the matrix style search engine that was adopted by Orbitz when they started up several years ago.  It is now owned by Google, and is the power behind Google Flight Search, Kayak, portions of many major airline web sites, and many others.  They keep their basic site out there, accessible to all, presumably as a testbed, and you can use it in its raw form. AFAIK it is the best way available for the average person to search for flights.  The site start page is here.

ITA is an extremely powerful flight search site, that can handle many options you may want to explore, although you have to go up a learning curve to get the most out of it.  I'm sure there's a lot it can do that I still haven't figured out, but even a basic, first-time use of it is yields more information than other flight search engines.  It cannot be used to actually book  -- use it to search, then go to the airline or another booking sight to buy the actual ticket.

Here is their explanation of the range of flight/fare combinations available in a typical city pair (3.6 BILLION possible combinations for a BOS-SFO r.t. on a particular day(s) that they did as a sample) -- it illustrates the problem of doing these searches.

One feature I really like about ITA matrix it what they call "time bars."  This is an incredibly rich but economical graphical display format showing all the flights from your search; the bar format shows visually the total flight time, location and length of layovers, etc.  for 20-30 flights in a single page, making it easy to compare the most important factors for your decision, i.e. cost, departure and arrival times or all flights in the itinerary, total flight time, and where and for how long you will lay over. You can get to the time bars from the first results page -- on the first results page from your search click "time bars" in the upper right corner of the box showing the flights that resulted; the display will shift from the default (a straight listing of flights) to the graphical format.

[porcupine]

John, thank you so much for posting this!  I'm planning another trip in September and having fun playing with ITA matrix.  One thing I haven't figured out yet is how to choose a different return flight from the one suggested, although I can peruse all the combinations (which is tedious).  Still, this is so much better than any of the other sites I've tried.

[DonRocks]

John, thank you so much for posting this!  I'm planning another trip in September and having fun playing with ITA matrix.  One thing I haven't figured out yet is how to choose a different return flight from the one suggested, although I can peruse all the combinations (which is tedious).  Still, this is so much better than any of the other sites I've tried.

Agreed. This is one post I won't be tweeting - people who read this website on their on volition can have the benefit of John's amazing revelation.

--- The following is completely off-topic and should be ignored; I wrote it while brainstorming, and will move it in due course.

John, this is my area of career expertise (high-speed searching) - it's what I did for almost 20 years. What do you mean by "matrix search?" Do you mean the use of multi-processing? I believe that (at least at the time), I developed the fastest possible algorithm for combining coprocessor results ever written, although I can't prove it (literally - I was never able to write a mathematical proof that it was correct, but I'm certain it is - nobody was ever able to come up with a single case where it was wrong, and it was running about two million complex queries a year in real time). Interestingly, I have a friend who is in a similar field for the investment banking industry, and the (machine-specific) algorithm he developed is actually inhibited by the speed of light; my algorithm was more generic and used pure, very simple Boolean algebra, combined with some very basic principles of computer science.

I'll write you about it one day if you're ever interested - it represented the highlight of my entire career as a computer scientist, and is now gone forever (because the software was "modernized, i.e., they're using a cheap replacement that runs on Oracle and is about one-hundred times slower - unless I write it down, nobody will ever see it again). I might bury it on this website in hopes that someone finds it one day after I'm gone. This "modernization" is proof-positive that it isn't always the "customer's fault" - sometimes it's the organization's fault: They were so afraid one of us (there were only two) would be hit by a truck that they'd never be able to replace us, so they switched to Oracle just to be able to find programmers. This is the Environmental Protection Agency, btw, who is now using a compromised enforcement search engine which only performs a small subset of what it used to do - there's no way the public will ever know. Previously, it combined physically disparate databases in real time; now, they physically combined a subset of each database into a single aggregate, only because Oracle needs something generic and easy to search on. As I type this, I realize I *have* to write down the algorithm somewhere because with the possible exception of this website, it's the most important contribution to mankind I'll ever make. And it's as good a time as any to once again honor my supervisor on the project.

[Keithstg]

Have you used pre-check or global entry? Curious if the time benefit is worth the cost and necessary advance paperwork. 

Yes and yes. I didn't find the paperwork or cost onerous at all. I will say that global entry is more of a time save than pre-check. Pre-Check is a time save at airports with fewer business travelers (like Orlando, for example) and less valuable at airports like Reagan and LGA- Marine Air. Other smaller airports (like Portland ME and Bradley - Hartford) aren't even really set up for pre check. Between the tickets I usually buy and a credit card program I generally end up in the "fast" line anyway, but fast can be a relative term at some airports.

[johnb]

John, thank you so much for posting this!  I'm planning another trip in September and having fun playing with ITA matrix.  One thing I haven't figured out yet is how to choose a different return flight from the one suggested, although I can peruse all the combinations (which is tedious).  Still, this is so much better than any of the other sites I've tried.

Glad you have found it to be useful.  Let us know of any good tricks you discover while exploring it!

John, this is my area of career expertise (high-speed searching) - it's what I did for almost 20 years. What do you mean by "matrix search?" Do you mean the use of multi-processing?

Whoa cowboy!  My computer knowledge is way too rudimentary to respond in any meaningful way to that. Perhaps I slightly misspoke -- What I meant was more along the lines of the matrix style they (used to) use to display the flight results, and I think that's also what they are referring to in their name.  It's a historical thing.  Way back when they started they were trying to get more information to fit within the real estate available on the typical computer screen, and that's when they came up with the matrix display.  If you remember how Orbitz displayed information back at the beginning you may recall the look of it. They've mostly abandoned it since in favor of other approaches, like the time bars, but you can still see a ghost of it in places, for example what returns in Orbitz or Google Flights if you click on the "flexible dates" tab (identical information on both); the information they display is the same information you can find in ITA if you click on "calendar of lowest fares" on their start page (though the latter doesn't work the same way and doesn't look the same, but it's based on the same information underneath).

[DonRocks]

What I meant was more along the lines of the matrix style they (used to) use to display the flight results, and I think that's also what they are referring to in their name.  It's a historical thing.  Way back when they started they were trying to get more information to fit within the real estate available on the typical computer screen, and that's when they came up with the matrix display. 

Refer to the Don! Rockwell! Shopping! and Cooking! Guide!

God I'm a total self-promoting whore today.

"Um, what do you mean by 'today,' you Narcissistic testicle?"

[porcupine]

Glad you have found it to be useful.  Let us know of any good tricks you discover while exploring it!

roger that

Have you used pre-check or global entry? Curious if the time benefit is worth the cost and necessary advance paperwork. 

I'm not Keithstg, but fwiw...  TSA pre-check is somewhat useful.  It isn't always available, but when it is, it's nice not to have to remove your shoes or take your computer out.  The lines get longer as time goes by, but they always move faster (for the afore-mentioned reasons, and because you don't have travel n00bs slowing things down).

As for global entry, I love it.  Coming into LA from Fiji, our several-hundred passenger plane landed at about the same time as a larger plane from Australia.  Every customs station was staffed, yet the lines were spilling past the ropes - 30 or 40 people per line, easily.  We went to the kiosks and got through in ten minutes, and the only reason it took that long is that a traveler new to global entry asked for our help and we walked him through it.

OTOH, with things like pre-check and global entry, 1984 is getting closer every day.  I just hope I die of old age before things get that bad.  I half expect to be placed on a watch-list just for posting this.

[DonRocks]

I half expect to be placed on a watch-list just for posting this.

You're already on one. Do you *really* know what I do?

Mwa-ha-ha. Mwaaaa-hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.

[dracisk]

Bart gave some really good info about Global Entry in this thread:

Do you know about Global Entry? It's similar to TSA Precheck but better (TSA Precheck was based on Global Entry, if anyone cares). With Global Entry, you have to apply on line, and then go to one of their processing centers for an "interview" and then you get a temporary card and can travel immediately. My son was going on a spring break trip with a family he's friendly with and they all had Global Entry (GE) so they asked him to get it. We applied online on Wednesday, he was approved on Friday, and we made his interview appointment the following Monday which happened to be MLK day (they were open!). Five days from start to finish!!!! I've spent more time waiting in DMV lines!

What GE does for you is it lets you skip the long immigration lines at the airport (the passport part) and check yourself in at a little kiosk. You fill out your customs form right there (no need to fill out those blue cards on the plane) and it gives you a print out. Then you get to skip the long lines at customs (the blue forms).......you walk past dozens and dozens of people and just give your print out to the agent and you're done.

My wife and I just came back from the Caribbean and our flight into Charlotte was late. The only way we made our connecting flight was because of GE. The entire customs/immigration process took maybe 3 minutes and the vast majority of that time was spent walking through the airport from station to station.

The other great thing about GE is you get all the TSA precheck benefits once you're approved for GE.

Even if there's only a slim change you're going to travel internationally in the next five years, it's worth the investment to sign up for GE. TSA precheck costs $85 for five years. GE costs $100 for five years.

[E]ven if you never travel internationally GE will get you through domestic lines faster (you use the TSA precheck lines). It only costs 15 bucks more.

You have to register your "known traveler number" IE your GE number with your airline, but once that's done, you're good and your tickets will be printed with "TSA precheck" on them.

The only downside is the background check is more extensive than TSAs. A few years ago I met a guy (in his 60s who was a physician) who was denied GE because of some dumb thing he got arrested for in his youth. This was a while ago so they may have gotten smarted about dumb mistakes 40 years ago, but I don't know. I think there may be some way to grieve stuff like that, but I'm not totally sure.

As far as getting searched for cheese or whatever.......you're less likely to have that happen because you barely spend anytime with a real person. You do it all through a kiosk. We just had to show our printed "receipt" to one agent, and then give it to another. No one looked at our bags or even talked to us. We were doing carry on, so I don't know if there's any difference with checked bags, but I don't think so based on the layout in Charlotte.

[iolaire]

Remember your GE fees are refundable by quite a few higher end credit cards now, Amex Platinum and some of the Premier Citibank cards.  You pay the fee via the annual fee, but it helps to justify some of the high annual fees.   And remember with GE your entry to the US is as slow as your luggage, so if you check bags and do not have status or premium seats you might end up waiting a long time at baggage claim anyway.  We love precheck and GE and usually do not check bags so entry is quick.

Those premium cards also usually come with some sort of lounge scheme, i.e. Priority Pass for the card holder.  Which is the BA lounge at IAD before 2 pm, and now the AirFrance lounge at IAD (we like this lounge, also included with Iceland Air business class...) and the AirSpace lounge at BWI, non at DCA.  We have enjoyed the Centurion lounges at DFW, LAS, and SEA with the Amex Platinum, and have not been to LGA, MIA, and SFO...

These days we have so many points from opening credit cards that we don't buy many tickets.  The two flights we bought last year were all incredible deals we read about on sites like @theflightdeal  etc... both Santiago Chile and Dublin Ireland (both with connections) were sold in the $360 range.

[lion]

Thanks for all the replies about Pre-Check and Global Entry. Have been thinking about getting it to help with upcoming international travel and the consensus appears to be it is helpful on certain routes. 

[johnb]

There's another new thing called Mobile Passport.  Available in four airports so far but more coming. Free.  I tried it once in ATL without much luck but if it works it can be helpful.  More info here.  Only for Customs and Immigration on arrival however; nothing to do with TSA on departure.

Speaking of PreCheck, here is a story that just appeared in a travel newsletter I receive.

[pcollins]

Global Entry is of great use if you will be travelling by yourself or with others with the Global Entry process. This means all travellers will be moving at the same speed. Just because you have the access doesn't mean your spouse or business traveller will have it, so be prepared for that. Bypassing the passport area, which while better than it used to be, is the first bottleneck. The next line/wait is luggage. If you have any sort of method for your bags to be priority unloaded, then that can be fast. Otherwise you may have a wait here. The last is the customs line. You also get to have a much shorter trip through that. On a good day, these shortcuts don't save much time at all. On a bad day (I travelled back to the US on Thanksgiving weekend. That was *bad*) it can be a sanity saver. The wait time for an interview in the DC area used to be painful, so I ended up doing it over a visit to family out in Milwaukee which literally had walk in availability.

The PreCheck access is something you get automatically if you have Global Entry. The biggest benefit of PreCheck is if you are carrying on something that would normally be a complete hassle to go through security with. For my job, I often have to travel with a large amount of testing devices and other electronics. I've had 15 trays go through the baggage scanners before just because they were so bothered by all of my equipment. With PreCheck, I only take out the laptop. There's a massive difference in the speed in that case. If you use a smaller airport, it's very likely you won't have a PreCheck security lane as an option and you are forced to go with the rest of the unwashed masses, so also the benefit is less if you use those often.

Mobile Passport looks interesting enough, but I haven't seen it as being too much of a benefit over the cities which the kiosks that people go through the passport lines in. As I highlighted earlier, that helps with only one of the three bottlenecks of international arrivals.

For credit cards with lounge access, I recommend the LoungeBuddy app. Put in which cards/access you have and it will identify where you can head to. This has helped with a number of trips where the Priority Pass website tends to be a bit more arcane.

I tend to avoid doing international arrivals at Chicago if I can help it. I was stuck in their queues for over two hours one day. No thank you for a return. Short connections in Charlotte are another no no. You often have to sprint across terminals to make your flight. I think most travellers make their own personal do's and dont's after accumulating scars.

I'll agree with the recommendation of the ITA Matrix. You can make some really granular queries with that tool (down to the routing codes) which I haven't been able to manage elsewhere.

[johnb]

I tend to avoid doing international arrivals at Chicago if I can help it. I was stuck in their queues for over two hours one day. No thank you for a return. Short connections in Charlotte are another no no. You often have to sprint across terminals to make your flight. I think most travellers make their own personal do's and dont's after accumulating scars.

I'll agree with the recommendation of the ITA Matrix. You can make some really granular queries with that tool (down to the routing codes) which I haven't been able to manage elsewhere.

Miami also used to be a horror show, but since I don't travel much any longer I don't know what he current situation is.  But the fundamental problem still exists, namely that all the flights from a particular area tend to arrive within a very narrow window (early morning in the case of Latin America) ) so the system gets bogged down every time.  So if you are coming up from Latam, I would suggest an alternate gateway if possible, particularly if you don't have Global Entry.  Generally speaking, less popular gateways (but not too small) are preferable if you can make them work for your particular circumstances; back in the day I used to fly Continental through Newark and got back to DC same time as if I had come through Miami, only with 1/10th the hassle and lines in Miami. Same is true of flights from Europe, which tend to arrive in mid-late afternoon and gum up the works.

[porcupine]

International arrivals at Dulles: apparently things got better with the introduction of Passport Express.  "Forty new self-service passport kiosks, installed in the airport's international arrival facilities, will help automate the international arrivals process, reducing the wait for passengers to be seen by a U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer."

We were there yesterday late afternoon; no other planes had arrived so there weren't many travelers around.  By the time our luggage came out, there was a wait to use the kiosks, though not a long wait.  Nonetheless, we got through with Global Entry in just a few minutes, even though I had items to declare and had to speak with someone at Customs and Border Protection.  Global Entry is definitely a time-saver, but as noted above everyone in your party needs to have it.

[DonRocks]

International arrivals at Dulles: apparently things got better with the introduction of Passport Express.  "Forty new self-service passport kiosks, installed in the airport's international arrival facilities, will help automate the international arrivals process, reducing the wait for passengers to be seen by a U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer."

We were there yesterday late afternoon; no other planes had arrived so there weren't many travelers to around.  By the time our luggage came out, there was a wait to use the kiosks, though not a long wait.  Nonetheless, we got through with Global Entry in just a few minutes, even though I had items to declare and had to speak with someone at Customs and Border Protection.  Global Entry is definitely a time-saver, but as noted above everyone in your party needs to have it.

Thanks for this information - my "expected wait time" when Thèrése and Francine (my MIL and AIL (aunt-in-law)) come from France is one hour - sometimes it's been a little less; sometimes it's been a little more, but I make it a point to show up there one hour after their plane lands. Now, I suspect this will change, and a welcome change it will be, too.

I'm about halfway through the Global Entry application (I didn't have my passport handy and didn't feel like looking for it) - you can fill out only part of the lengthy application, and it will be saved for you when you return.

[pcollins]

There are also versions of Global Entry for the UK and Mexico (only good at certain airports). If you're a frequent traveler you may find some benefit in that membership as well.