Bidding help

[eridix_1973]

After being unsuccessful in finding available Dividend Miles seats, I am seriously considering using Priceline for an upcoming trip to Maui with my husband to celebrate our 10th anniversary. I have done a lot of research on what flights and costs are out there, but don't know what to set as my opening bid.

2 tickets

Depart:

MDT to OGG 9/2/05 or 9/3/05

Return:

OGG to MDT 9/10/05 or 9/11/05

Lowest price:

United (on united site): $685, with taxes (1 connection going out, 1 stop and one connection coming back).

The Priceline website says that they will not book a flight that has both a stop and a connection (and no connection will be more than 3 hours), unless you agree to it. If that's true, American has one stop on both departing and returning flights for $823

What should I set as my opening bid? I'd like to try to spend $500 or less.

I'm a little scared of getting bad flights, but want to take advantage of a possible good price.

Any feedback would be very helpful.

[thereuare]

What are the taxes for this route?

How much would you have to save in order to risk poor flight times?

[eridix_1973]

Thanks for the quick reply.

United.com didn't show theirs, but I found the same flights on Expedia and they show about $80. It's strange that American's 1 stop flights show only $53 in taxes and fees, but their total cost is still higher than United's.

We're adding either a day before or a day after our originally planned dates (if we were to buy tickets elsewhere) for flexibility and re-bidding, I just don't want us to spend 16-18 hours traveling.

If we can get the tickets for $500 or less, I'm thinking we'd be saving at least $350.

Do you know which airlines issue paper tickets as opposed to e-tickets? Does it generally buy the tickets from the lowest priced airline that it shows you before you put in your final bid price? I played with a couple different scenarios on Priceline this morning after I saw a ticket delivery fee:

Depart 9/2, return 9/10, paper tickets. Lowest priced airline United.

Depart 9/3, return 9/10 or 9/11, e-tickets. Lowest priced airline American.

I really appreciate your help.

[thereuare]

The route you receive is not necessarily the cheapest route... it's not as simple as that.

You can use "Airfare Re-Bidding" by first bidding on your desired routing (during this process, note the alternate airports that you're able to check and write them down. If you're original bid fails, re-access priceline and start a brand new purchase/bid, using one of the alternate airports as a depature. Once you get to the "name your own price" screen, ONLY check the desired airport you want (MTB)... make sure no other airports are checked.

We don't see too much airfare bidding here as the deals are not usually that great, but the above is a technique that has successfully been used in the past. Because the search parameters from the very first screen are different, this is not seen as a duplicate bid (although the same exact itinerary is searched for each time).

Assuming the above technique still works, you'll have 6 re-bid opportunities.... so just start with a low price and gradually increase $25 or so each re-bid opportunity until you're able to reach your maximum bid amount.

If you have questions on the above feel free to ask.