CHEAPER Flight than all other travel sites! Check out Continental Airline's online site!
Written: Jul 22 '02 (Updated Aug 17 '02)
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I need airline tickets to Florida. I hadn't planned on flying any more until late Fall but Club Med had an offer for travel agents to stay free and guest stay for about $200 for the week. Well, it was just too good to pass up and here I am looking for 7 airline tickets.
Since this is a LONG flight from Seattle, I wanted to go Continental if it was close to the lowest price. The reason? I have long since given up using my points for free miles (I do use my Visa ones though as they are good on a multiple of choices) and instead use the miles for upgrades on long trips. After my last trip to London, I easily have enough to upgrade this time. So off I went looking for the best deal on Continental.
GETTING THE BEST PRICE
I searched all the known sites; Cheaptickets, Travelocity, TravelNow and even my favorite, Orbitz to get the best deal. They all came up with the same price. I then headed over to Continental.com to see if they could beat that price.
They did! And by $45 per ticket, which for my family is a savings of $315.00!
I had a question about the layover on one of the flight (it wasn't very clear on the site) and so I give Continental's toll free number. Along with getting that information I asked her to price the flights I had chosen. She came up with the SAME prices as all the other sites and $45 higher than the online price. I thanked her and headed back to book it online.
Note: While 2 other airlines had come up with a lower price on the travel sites, Continental's online price was the LOWEST of them all.
FINDING YOUR WAY AROUND THE SITE
There are two bars ~ one on the top of the page and another on the bottom. Both of them will take you directly to an area once you click on an icon.
The top bar choices are Business Travel Center ~ Vacations & Specials ~ Frequent Flyer Program ~ Travel Information & Services and Corporate Information
From the bottom bar you can go to Fares & Reservations ~ Flight Status ~ View Schedules ~ One Pass Account ~ Search/Index ~ Customer Service and Home
As you go through the site, the top bar follows you but the bottom bar does not. The bottom bar does come SOME of the time, some of the time it follows with DIFFERENT choices and some of the time it doesn't follow at all! You will always be able to get back to the HOME button but all in all, it is a bit confusing and I would prefer that BOTH bars remain constant.
BOOKING MY FLIGHT
As with most travel sites, I start out giving my departure city, arrival city, travel dates and choice of travel time with anytime producing the most results. You also put in the number of people traveling and if any of them are infants, children or seniors. The last things to put in are if you want your results based on price or schedule and how many results you want posted per page. Now, submit!
I was given 6 choices that had a price difference of $70 from the lowest to the highest. Mostly these were because of time difference with the cheapest being a red eye. We passed on that one since it also had a 4 hour layover in Texas and I can just imagine the 7 of us sleeply coming off one plane, waiting 4 hours in the airport and then boarding another plane! No thank you!!
The next two took off around 6 but also had early flights home which we didn't want. So I used the change search (located to the left of the flight listings) and put 3 PM as the coming home time. This brought up 4 choices with the second one being perfect.
A quick Select this itinerary and I was taken to a page with a review of my reservation. It showed the flights, the one pass miles, the meals served and the trip duration.
Since I have been there before, I just put in my username and password. If you are not registered, you will need to fill in your personal information. You also have the option of leaving your credit card information but I have chosen to put mine in each time.
This is one of my favorite parts of this site ~ it saves your traveling information. This means that when I bought seven tickets, all seven of our profiles came up and it asked if that is who was traveling. If there are fewer of us going, it allows me to select who is going. Along with the names it also carries over what type of seat they prefer and what type of meal they like. This is a nice as ours range from child meal to vegetarian to low salt and it would be a pain to have to put this in each time. You can make changes as I always put in fruit platter if we are on a lunch flight and it allows me to do that with out a problem.
Next comes another of my favorite parts ~ the seat selections! They let you go through each segment and pick your seats. When the plane comes up, all of the taken seats are marked, the available ones are marked and they have one set blacked out. The black seats are the ones they have chosen for you, based on your preferences. They actually do a good job and only seldom have we chosen different seats. Sometimes they have the front ones saved for "elite one pass holders" but a simple call to the toll free number a day or two later and a request for seats more toward the front always puts us in those seats.
Once I picked our seats, I was taken to the final page with a review of everything. Once I made sure it is all correct, I clicked submit and that was that, my reservation was made!
OKAY, MY RESERVATION IS MADE, NOW WHAT?
When the reservation is done, a review page will show up. You then choose which way you would like to receive your confirmation paperwork ~ my email, fax or snail mail .
I always print the review page when it comes up and then have the actual confirmation send to our fax. This arrives within minutes after my reservation is made.
Normally, that is it and I am set for the flight but this time I still have to call their toll-free number to use my miles for an upgrade. There is no place on their site to do that but even if there were, I'd probably call it in since I will be trading points around. You are allowed to upgrade another person's ticket using your points. I will be applying my miles on my husbands ticket so he can sit in first class along with our oldest who wants to use hers for this trip. I would prefer to give them to him as he is 6'2 and therefore much more in need of the extra space than I am. This will be a surprise and I will tell him it is because of his birthday which he will celebrate while we are in Florida. Geez, sometimes I am just too nice LOL
THIS AND THAT
** Get 1000 miles for a limited time when you book your flight online.
** Continental US toll free reservation numbers are ~~ 1-800-525-0280 for Domestic Travel and 1-800-231-0856 for International Travel. Their CANADIAN numbers are ~~ 1-800-525-0280 in English and 1-800-537-3444 in French.
** Alaska Airlines is a partner of Continental's and will allow you to put your miles on your OnePass account AT the time of booking
** ALWAYS check to see if you can fly into another airport for less. I found out that it was $100 per ticket LESS to fly into an airport 45 miles away from where we will be picked up. Realizing QUICKLY that it would NOT cost $700.00 for us to rent a car back and forth between airports, I decided on the alternative airport.
** ~~ ** ~~ ** 2BUZY'S FINAL THOUGHTS ON THIS SITE ~~ ** ~~ ** ~~
I recommend Continental.com for booking tickets and checking prices online.
As with ALL travel, check, check and check AGAIN for the lowest fare! While Continental.com often provides the lowest fare for me cross country, it has NEVER had the lowest fares for my shorter West Coast flights.
They are worth your time to check for fares the next time you travel!
Recommended:
Yes
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About the Author
Location: In front of the computer!
Reviews written: 381
Trusted by: 289 members
About Me: "I'm for a stronger death penalty." - President George Bush
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