The first flight I want to get a price for is my desired flight. You want to have your list of questions you answered in the "Flight Checklist Sheet" section handy for this step. At this point, you can go to any of the reservation sites or scanners, (the links for them all are in the Travel Directory link in the menu above) but my personal preference when I am looking for a specific flight is Kayak.

My recomendation is that you open a new window and go into Kayak, (or just click the link), and just follow right along. Input your dates and destination. Don't worry about searching other sites at the moment. At this point, we are just trying to find our preferred flight.

Once you have their results you will notice that there is a sidebar similar to the one to the left. This handy dandy little side bar allows you to easily filter down the results by the number of stops, the times it departs or lands and by airline, all without doing a new search. You can take your list and refine the search to match the items that are important to you.

Kayak only searches the airlines, so the prices you see are the actual prices. There is one more thing you need to look at to get an accurate price though. Right at the bottom of the sidebar, there is a link that says "See Airline Fees". This will open another window and show you the fees for luggage, meals, pets, or if they offer seats with additional leg room. You need to take all these extra fees into consideration when comparing prices. For example, if you are going to have two pieces of luggage, you need to find your airlines on the list and add their fee for checking luggage to the price.

Once you have chosen your preferred flight, make a note of the airline it is with, the total price, and the preferences it does and doesn't have from your Flight Comparison Sheet. This should be the preferred flight you are looking for and will be used as a base for comparing all the other flights we find.

Once you have your notes you can close out that other window and we will get going on finding the cheapest flight.