tintedpane.com

When booking a flight to LA for a friend’s wedding on AA.com, I tried to use a discount code. It didn’t work. Brought me to an error page. So I called customer service as was directed on that error page. They told me that the code would work online, but only for LAX. The discount is applicable to all neighboring airports, which I was trying to book the flight for, but it needed to be manually entered in by the service rep and wouldn’t work online. But with the new fees they’re charging for booking over the phone, I would lose out over the meager 5% discount. Sigh.

On the other hand, I’ve found a new travel research site, kayak.com. It’s a meta-airline/hotel/rental pricing site that searches most all of the popular sites out there for cheap flights and serves them up in an easy to digest presentation. Unfortunately, Southwest Airlines is still not a happy player when it comes to allowing third party sites to traverse their rates. So aside from SW, all other major carriers should be there (I haven’t verified that in any detail though).  They say that their revenue comes from advertising and clicks so it’s not a travel agency like orbitz or hotwire.