Ask HN: What is your best flight booking app/site

I'd love to know too. I used the trip.com app to visit Thailand from the US. They misspelled my name wrong throughout the tickets, which terrified me because I thought it was going to be a problem (second time traveling solo). It wasn't a problem. During check-in, they said it happens all the time, nothing to worry about.

Everything worked out, no complaints from me, but would love to hear about alternatives.

My go-to has been checking Skyscanner, Google Flights, and Momondo then booking through the airlines website.

if your goal is just to look up prices, google flights is amazing!

Always book directly with airlines. You'll almost never find a cheaper price from a third party, unless you are a corporate traveler with negotiated agreements through a corporate travel agency. Airlines will often only let the third party who bought the ticket change it, so you have to go through them and often pay a fee if something goes wrong. It's the opposite with hotels. For airlines, use third party sites only to find routes and estimated prices, then see what the cost is to book directly with the airline. Google Flights is usually the best search engine for most people, but don't clickthrough the links to book directly with the airlines. ITA Matrix is the backend to Google Flights and if you're a HNer, you'll appreciate the power interface.

> visit the site twice and they bump up the price

This is a myth, at least for flights. Flight prices normally go up the closer to the date. They almost never go down as you get closer to the date. So there will be many cases where you visit a site at one time and see one price, then if you visit it at a later time, your expectation should be that the price has increased. But the price would have gone up anyway. Also, airlines do use # of tickets already sold to set prices, and so you should expect that as time moves forward, it is likely someone had the same idea of going from city A to city B as you on that same date, and they bought their ticket.

It's the same kind of myth as "I was talking about this thing with my friend and then later saw a targeted ad for it, so they must be listening to my microphone." No, they know you're interested in that product or that there is increased demand for that flight from data collected elsewhere.

Google Flights first, and then I go to the airline's site to purchase. I never deal with third-party resellers - they might be cheaper in some cases but a nightmare to deal with if the flight changes or gets canceled.

I like Google Flights so much that I also built a Chrome extension[1] to improve the interface (hiding the third-party affiliate links, putting seat data in the top-level of the results, and making business class searches easier).

[1] https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/skysavvy-enhance-go...

I fly a lot, but mostly internationally. I use Google flights and Skyscanner.

I mean I'm partial since it's my site, but I do like Beat That Flight - https://www.beatthatflight.com.au/ - in Australia/New Zealand (although you can use it anywhere, if that wasn't obvious) ;)

I find OTAs are often substantially cheaper, they make their money with upsells (insurance, txt updates, etc) but if you just tick no to everything, you can often get quite the bargain.

If I know what carriers fly the route I always go direct to them. I might check the Skyscanner type sites to confirm which carriers fly the route but I've never booked a flight through them.

Generally if you book direct it is much less hassle especially if you end up needing to make any changes to your booking. Booking via another party means they control the ticket and this makes flight changes, cancellations, etc much more difficult down the road. Booking direct means I can simply change in the airlines app -- often with no or low fees. And if I end up needing to call, I can call the airline directly or visit their office and change my tickets -- both of which is not possible if the ticket is held by another party.

Booking direct also allows you to access a wider variety of fare types. The carrier I fly most often (Air New Zealand) has a complex fare structure that doesn't fit in with most resellers. This means resellers usually only offer the more expensive bag/food/etc-included fares whereas I can get the seat-only fare directly saving quite a bit of money.

Really there is no benefit I can see booking with a third party. Always go direct to the airline.

Avoid 3rd parties site like anything. If ever you get in trouble or need any assistance, you'ree not going to get any help from airline and/or have to pay crazy fees. Recently my sister had to change the flight and were charged $750 for 3 people to change the ticket on top of airline difference. Airline was willing to do it complimentary but due to them they had to pay $600 on top

For booking, matrix ita is great too. It's owned by google and then kayak/skyscanner etc to check out route ideas

Honestly haven’t had too bad of an experience with Capital One’s hopper portal. Normally I don’t care for these aggregators, but 9/10 times the price difference is negligible, I don’t have to create a new account, and their customer service has actually been decent ( booked a flight with ryan air that showed incorrectly free check in on the portal, and they reimbursed me for the baggage ). Also it usually ends up forwarding me the direct flight details anyway, so I can always modify the booking on the main airline’s page.

I see a few people saying to avoid third parties but I’ve had good experiences with Amex travel including with their phone support. Does anybody have any bad experience with Amex travel to share?

Where Google Flights falls flat is when you want to search to/from multiple airports not on the same city. Especially here in the UK, I’m happy flying from basically any airport in the country, as I’d much rather drive/get a train for a bit longer than have to take a connecting flight. For this I use Momondo: https://www.momondo.co.uk/

My first instinct was skyscanner but from the other replies that might be a bad idea (it’s generally pretty good and I mostly fly in Europe, but USA 1-2 times a year I also booked via skyscanner and it was pretty competitively priced).

https://www.skyscanner.com/

Maybe most of the advice to book direct to airline is concerned with domestic US flights between states etc. ???

I am surprised that no one mentioned ITA Matrix, the search engine behind Google flights.

https://matrix.itasoftware.com/search

The results will show the raw codes, eg. ticket class, fare construction & other airline codes.

Use the result you like to book with an agent, or https://bookwithmatrix.com

One annoying feature that Google Flights lacks is including the cost of a checked bag (only supported ex USA or just with domestic US flights, I think)

Kiwi/Kayak has that feature.

But Google Flights is so very quick and easy to use, I almost always use it. It's pretty easy to estimate baggage fees (usually the fare that includes baggage is around +£120 more)

hotwire.com for cheaper (than normal) hotels. Thank me later. :-)

AZair.com (AZair.eu) allow you to combine flights from multiple airports. Covers Europe, Mediterranean and Asia. Suggested in the previous "Ask HN: How do you find airline tickets?" [2]

[1] https://www.azair.eu/index.php

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36793357

Wouldn't it be great to know what fares are cheap right now if you are flexible with dates and destinations before you even book? That's where Mighty Travels PREMIUM comes in. You can see the best deals from the US to Europe or the best deals going into Cape Town.

Disclaimer worked on Mighty Travels before.

Is there a website where I can search for (cheap) flights TO an airport, without specifying FROM?