 Google acquired ITA a while ago. Most of the brain used by Google Flights comes from ITA and thus no doubt its pretty good at what it does. You can use the "google flight functionality" to easily narrow down to your desired flights by using few of the techniques below:
The search itself is very easy to use if you understand how to use it. Below are some sample example search to get you going. San Jose City to New York City Round trip for 4 days length of stay: As you can see from below snapshots, entering the source/destination and initial set of dates and by clicking in the "date field" will show prices for various dates in the given month. You can then use the "right arrows" to look up the prices for various months as well as you can change the date range on the bottom with "+/- 0 days" to add flexibility to 4 days of stay. 
1 - San Jose to New York with 4 days of Stay
2 - San Jose to New York with 4 days of Stay showing lower prices
San Jose City to XXX destination for 4 days of stay: You can enter the "Source" and the length of stay and Click on the Map to see what are the possible "destinations" which could fit your price range. In fact you do not have to restrict yourself to the U.S.A but you could select any region where you might want to visit. 
3 - Click on "Expand Map" to see the possibilities of your destination
4 - Prices to various cities. To get more focused you can narrow into a given region.
5 - Click on a "destination" to see the pricing for various dates. You can see this as bar graph on the left.
Los Angeles to Tel Aviv (TLV) or Rome (FCO) with default 4 days and +/- 2 days of stay: You could also search for multiple destinations by specifying the airport names separated by comma and thus browse through "days range" where the fare would be cheaper. As you can see from below the fare could vary from range of $1600 to almost half at $821. 
6 - Search for Multiple destination with given date range and +/- optional switch
Search for Specific "Alliance" such as One-World or any airlines: You could even narrow down the search based on the alliance or airlines you would like to fly from the available ones. Sure this might be more costlier then the cheapest option available, but a preferred one for you. 
7 - Searching by Alliance or Airlines to earn those miles in your preferred program
As you can see from above the Google Flights could be quite useful in your search for that flight. It could also help you narrow down to the specific destination, dates or airlines and thus make your travel fit your budget or time constraints.
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 Flying the airlines used to be the traditional way of collecting miles on airlines for that dream trip, but thanks to the advent of "mileage earning" credit cards (where you earn miles/points based on spend on the credit card) it has become easier than ever to earn those miles to redeem for your dream vacation trip or that future trip which you have been planning for a while. With the help of credit cards, some effort from your end and lot of available techniques you could rack up those miles for your "award travel redemption". Some of these techniques are:
Let's see few methods which you can follow to generate the miles/points on the credit card of your choice by "Buying/Selling gift cards". Method 1: Buy gift card online for merchants that awards points/miles for their gift card purchase and exchanging those gift card in store for more valuable gift card. A common example where above method is used is Sears. Sears usually awards miles/points for purchase of their physical gift cards through various portals. For example if you earn 10 miles/$ spend ( or 10% Cash-back) on purchase of sears gift cards through the portal, later on which you can use to purchase Visa/MasterCard in the store (provided the store sells those and cashier is fine doing it). You could also use Sears gift card to buy other merchant gift cards such as Amazon or Shell (provided they are available and cashier is fine doing it). Purchasing $1k of Sears gift card would generate 10k miles/points ( or $100 cash-back) which could help you for that future trip. Method 2: Buy gift cards online at discounted rate and sell these gift cards at minimal loss on "gift card exchange sites". A common example of these would be to Buy gift cards online on Ebay when Ebay bonuses it by giving percentage discount of 8% or more or 4X or greater bonus Ebay Bucks. These could be then sold to various gift card re-sellers. You could scan through "giftcardgranny" for the resell value you would get before you buy the gift card on Ebay so that you know your profit/loss before hand. Method 3: Buy discounted gifts cards online for merchants that allow buying Visa/MasterCard or other better value merchant gifts card in-store or online using their gift cards. Again Sears would qualify here for in-store gift card purchase using Sears gift card. There are other stores which would allow you to do that. A useful place to browse for this is at Frequent Miler Laboratory. Walmart used to allow using their gift cards to purchase Visa/MasterCard online, but no longer does that. Hope these data helps you to get going in your miles quest for the upcoming trip.  There are quite a websites that publishes good to great air travel fares. There fares become available for variety of reasons few of which are listed below:
Having flexibility in your travel plan and and knowing about these fares in the timely manner before they disappear can help you make that dream destination trip come true. To that end below listed are the few websites that will help you track on good fares when they become available. Note that the first one is USA originating and there are others in the list which are primarily from Europe.
So, next time if you are looking for that awesome vacation make sure you look through these websites to see if there is something that interests you! |
AuthorI love traveling / backpacking. This blog focuses on below 3 aspects of travel: Archives
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