The business of online airline ticket sales has boomed with the rise of the Internet, making travel agencies nearly obsolete. Now, instead of hiring travel agents to book trips for them, millions of Americans are booking their own flights online. Online airline tickets allow consumers to shop for the best deal on a variety of travel websites, which tends to save a lot of money. By buying tickets online, consumers are also able to make last-minute changes to trips, upgrade to first-class, and better manage rewards points.
Expedia.com, Travelocity.com, Cheaptickets.com and Sidestep.com are four of the biggest websites for bargain online airline ticket buying. Customers can log on to these sites and put in the start date and end date of their trip. Essentially, these dates are when the customer wants to fly out of their home airport and arrive back to that airport. Then, these sites search a variety of airline websites and display the lowest prices for flights. The prices are based on a variety of things, such as the time of year, the airline, number of stops, length of trip and how early the trip was booked before the trip commences.
Another great website for airline ticket bargain hunting is www.airfarewatchdog.com. This website gives customers tips on where to go online for the absolute lowest ticket price. Consumers enter their home city, or the city they're flying out of. A list of cities that are on sale will pop up along with the airline or travel website that is selling the ticket at that price. The customer can then go to that website and buy the ticket for a rock-bottom price.
Not every travel website searches every airline. In fact, most travel websites don't. That is why it is important to shop around for airline tickets on the websites of airlines that you frequent, that fly in and out of your home airport, or that have a hub in your home airport. Often, the actual site of the airline has the cheapest ticket. It can be more beneficial sometimes to search the travel websites, then head to the individual airline sites to check for better deals.
In the fall of 2007, most major airlines stopped issuing paper tickets. It was a move that is estimated to save the airline industry nearly $3 billion a year, according to the International Air Transport Association (IATA).
In addition to saving the airline industry and consumers money, online airline ticketing gives airlines the opportunity to better record ticket revenue. In the fall of 2007, one out of every two tickets sold was an e-ticket, according to the IATA. E-tickets are also beneficial to travel agents still in business, because it removes the need for ticket printers, maintenance of paper tickets and the distribution of tickets.
