Flight help request For Aus-> Las Vegas NV

[Double Draw]

I started using the Betterbidding ramp to Priceline and have bid in successive $2 increments to a current $166 base before taxes. I Have not been very successful. (But nevertheless having fun using your virtually unlimited bidding stategies without having to wait 24 hrs between bids. Thanks for that!) The retail low value of my trip is in the neighborhood of a $185 base for some of the low quality flight times. (Which are all right for me and this trip) The tax/fees are running around $40-42 avg. So far, I am not seeing much incentive to continue bidding for these unknown departure times since my margin between an unknown bid and a retail bid has now shrunk to about $19/ea ticket. I have realized through your site that the savings spread has typically not been that great, but I am looking at 4 tickets which I hoped to be a good multiplied value. Since my initial leaving location is Mid point between Austin TX and San Antonio I can easily leave from either location. (I Have bid them both to the value mentioned above) Do you have any suggestions? I am currently 22 days out on this trip and have time if waiting is a viable strategy. As usual, your comments are welcome and very much appreciated.

[thereuare]

Look at the terms of the current 'retail' ticket to see how many days advanced purchase it is... usually 14 or 21 days; you don't want this to be a 21 day advance purchase while you hold out 2-3 more days, get rejected at future bids, then find the current fare is gone and you're now left paying much higher prices because you're inside the 21 days window.

As you've read elsewhere, airfare deals can be had, but they're far and few between, so if the current retail fare is good based upon historical factors, and decent flight times, i would just book those.

Thanks for using our PRICELINE links for your bidding.

[Double Draw]

Just to close the loop. I ended up ramping up through Betterbidding to Priceline and placed a retail flight purchase of $195 along with an additional $42 of fees x 4. Total of $237 ea. This is around $10 more ea than what I saw yesterday. One comment I have. While doing the multi airline search I located an acceptable $172 offer in Travelocity. While going through the acceptance process, I was surprised with a message screen that said the price has now changed. The price that was offered was double the above amount. Looked like a bait and switch, but I guess this is within their rights to change at anytime till accepted. oh well! Thank you for your quick response to my post. Your comments to me and others have developed my traveling skills and I appreciate you. Viva Las Vegas!

[thereuare]

Thanks for 'closing' this thread.

In regards to the price change thru Travelocity, most online travel agencies don't query real time live data on every search as it's expensive to do so (think about the quantity of searches and flight combinations done in a given day) so they get data every few hours, download it to their own servers, then use that to display rates, only checking for 'true' availability once a user is ready to purchase. This system works fine the majority of the time, but sometimes a rate does change between the updates and can account for the price difference you experienced (there are a few other reasons why this could happen, but this is the most common scenario (and least technical :) ))

Thanks for 'closing' this thread with your results and thank you for using our PRICELINE link for your purchase.