PHL to OGG

[elanders]

Hello, my sister is getting married in Maui in Sept 07. So my wife and I are "forced" :) into a Hawaii vacation. We are looking to find the best price available and are looking for some advice.

The current best price available is $639 a ticket through various websites. I was wondering if anyone had advice on when to book/bid for tickets and if anyone had an idea as to how low to go or if we should wait awhile. I really have no idea what price is good enough to buy at.

The travel dates are Sept 15-22 (Sat/Sat). Airports PHL preffered to OGG, but BWI is possible

Thanks in advance for the help, and I will be sure to post the results when we get tickets.

[thereuare]

Welcome to BetterBidding!

From the best prices above, what is the base fare and how much are fees/taxes?

How much would you have to save to make an opaque airfare tix worthwhile? (ie- no choosing time schedule, length of layover, etc)

[elanders]

Tickets that I found (Orbitz) are $555 with $84 in taxes and fees.

I would say that tickets would need to be about $575 after fees to make it worth doing the opaque thing. As long as the possible layover/stop(s) were within reason.

Thanks for your help...

[thereuare]

This is current at time of post:

Domestic travel: Connection times for domestic travel can be up to 3 hours, depending on the best available routing. Keep in mind that 80% of domestic connections booked by priceline are 2 hours or less.

Is this reasonable to you?

[elanders]

I would say yes

[thereuare]

To get PHL to show in the list of departure airports, you can 'start' with any of the following as a departure:

PHL

ACY

EWR

TTN

ABE

To get OGG to show in the list of arrival airports, you can 'start' with any of the following as a arrival:

OGG

JHM

So you can start by select PHL-->OGG and place a bid if that is rejected, you close that browser and re-access priceline however you did previously.

Start again, but select PHL-->JHM, but on the next screen UNcheck JHM and check OGG (so only PHL and OGG are once again select)... bid again, if rejected repeat the process, starting with each of the following airport matches, but then always changing it on the next screen to PHL-->OGG:

PHL-->OGG

ACY-->OGG

EWR-->OGG

TTN-->OGG

ABE-->OGG

................

PHL-->JHM

ACY-->JHM

EWR-->JHM

TTN-->JHM

ABE-->JHM

So you get 10 bids per bidding cycle. Since you want a ticket price of roughly $490 before taxes and fees, you can star at say at say $300 and increase by $15 with each re-bid.

I haven't bid on an airline tix in quite some time, but the above re-bidding used to hold true and another user recently had no problem trying it for their own itinerary. Just make sure that your confirm screen each time only shows the actual airports (PHL and OGG) you want to fly in/out of (and also doublecheck the total after taxes and fees is acceptable, as taxes and fees can change depending upon airport itinerary).

Any questions feel free to ask.

Good Luck and let us know how it goes.

PS- i don't know this market that well, but a little over a year ago we flow from EWR-->SFO-->HNL for about $600/pp and that was considered to be a very good rate... so $6xx for the above may actually be pretty good

PPS- just did a search on Orbitz for your dates, from EWR-->OGG and got a rate of $556 all-in, which is under your targetted budget above, so maybe it would be worth yoru while to travel to EWR instead of PHL to depart?

[elanders]

Thank you very much for the "how to" I will likely try the bidding process. The reason PHL is preferred is that we have family near the airport which means free parking and a place to stay if we want, but I will check it out regardless. We actually live in Harrisburg, but flights out of here are pricey. I will check back in later!

[elanders]

Well I got the tickets using priceline. I started pretty low and bid up using the system suggested and ended up getting an accepted bid for $475, which came to $522.55 a ticket after fees. The best advertised price at the time of purchase was $632 a ticket so I was able to save 109.45 a ticket! The flight times I ended up with were fairly optimal as well.

Thanks to thereuare and betterbidding.com

[thereuare]

Glad it worked out well for you and you were able to save some money.

Was this out of BWI or PHL?

How are your flight times and layovers?

[elanders]

the trip is PHL to OGG. We bid for roundtrip tickets Friday 9/14 to Saturday 9/22

Departure

We leave Friday at 8:00am, 45 minute layover in Chicago, in Hawaii by 2:00pm (local)

--This is the best possible flight arrangement (as long as we make the connecting flight)

Return

We leave Saturday at 11:00pm, 2 hour layover in San Fran, Arrive at PHL at 5:30pm SUNDAY.

-This was not as ideal, but all flights available involved a Sunday return and it just means we are in Hawaii longer.

[Matthew]

I was interested in what flights they had exactly so i searched:

Fri 14 Sep 2007 to Sat 22 Sep 2007

PHL > OGG

OGG > PHL

United 8:00a

11:00p 2:00p

5:31p 1 (12h 00m)

1 (12h 31m)

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