America flights question

[Tubby Isaacs]

Wanting to travel from Washington-Houston in March next year. I'm thinking of buying the tickets as soon as I can. Anything more I should know about US flight prices?

[ursus arctos]

Comparison of Google Flights and Kayak that I found useful

You might as well set up searches and alerts now.

[WOM]

That's good to know. I always use Google Flights, and the 'buying separate legs' thing was always a gripe. I'll give Kayak a go next time and see how it fares. Pun not intended.

[Femme Folle]

That's confident, but it's not Kayak confident.

[matt j]

There are three Washington airports and two Houston airports, and depending on where you stay in either place transfers to/from the airport can wipe out any price advantage or time difference.

Some flights will leave national airport and fly to and land in Dulles before continuing onwards.

Based on previous experience, cheapest connections between Washington-Houston will likely be on Southwest airlines. They may not show the cheapest deals for SW on flight aggregators (though this may have changed from when I did this route).

[ursus arctos]

That’s an excellent point about the airports.

BWI and Dulles both serve “Washington”, but are about 60 miles apart.

[San Bernardhinault]

Yeah. If you're in DC (rather than in the Falls Churchy DC suburbs) your best choices for airports are National (now called Reagan), followed by Baltimore, followed by Dulles.

I can't offer a recommendation on the Houston end.

Some airlines (Southwest in particular) allow for late changes to your schedule at little or no cost. And - not relevant to you, but is to me - if you fly regularly and cancel they just give you a credit of the cost of your flight. Effectively giving a free cancellation policy if you travel on Southwest.

Also true that Southwest lets you take two checked bags free of charge. Most of the regular airlines charge you for even one checked bag.

Occasionally the cost of a business class ticket on a more traditional airline is actually less than that of an economy ticket plus the costs of all the extra fees (like the checked bag) - keep an eye on that.

Personal preference for airlines when travelling within the US (provided the routings are good)

1 - JetBlue
2 - Southwest
3 - Virgin America
4 - Alaska (3&4 have just merged, so I don't know what the difference is)
5 etc - Mainstream airlines: Delta, United, American
8 - Frontier
9 - Spirit

[San Bernardhinault]

Also

https://www.skyscanner.com/

is a useful tool for checking cheapest flights across a wide range of airlines and dates. Although Southwest doesn't show up on their scans.

Also worth noting that JetBlue, Southwest and Alaska all charge per flight - there's no benefit to return flights, so if you're doing a multi-stop or flying out of a different airport to the one you flew in on, they may be a better choice.

[DCI Harry Batt]

Some flights will leave national airport and fly to and land in Dulles before continuing onwards.

Are they both Washington airports? That's horrific, if so.

[ad hoc]

Be very careful with skyscanner with the booking sites it sends you to. Never evereverfor example buy a ticket through gotogate which is one of the sites that Skyscanner sends you to

[ursus arctos]

As a general rule, you are always better off buying a ticket from the airline itself, especially if you end up having to change your flight in any way.

Google Flights makes that process very easy.

TonTon, National and Dulles are both Washington airports, though I didn't know that there were flights that stop at both (it makes even less sense that you may think, as they are only 23 miles apart and on the same side of the Potomac).

[San Bernardhinault]

Be very careful with skyscanner with the booking sites it sends you to. Never evereverfor example buy a ticket through gotogate which is one of the sites that Skyscanner sends you to

Yes. Use Skyscanner to check prices and dates, and then go to the airline itself to buy the tickets.