Getting from Hamilton to Orlando on the cheapity-cheap?

September 24, 2011 3:29 PM

Flying from Hamilton, ON to Orlando on the cheap?

I rarely fly, and now I find myself needing to get from Hamilton, Ontario (or Toronto, but Hamilton preferred) to Orlando in late February of 2012. Beyond making reservations directly with Westjet, is there any clever way to get a cheaper flight? Secret websites, secret passwords, secret handshakes? Optimal times to reserve, if earlier doesn't always equal better?

posted by the dief to Travel & Transportation (7 answers total)

Best answer: I've never flown out of Munro, but I would guess that it'd be significantly cheaper to fly out of Toronto, even counting in the GO fare, or better yet, (if you can rent a car / beg a friend with a car) Buffalo, NY. (I've actually taken transit from Hamilton to Buffalo, but it requires some sense of... adventure -- you take the GO bus to Niagara Falls, walk a couple kilometres to the Rainbow Bridge into the States, then take a local bus from Niagara Falls, USA to Buffalo airport.) YMMV.
posted by tivalasvegas at 3:44 PM on September 24, 2011

Response by poster: Well, just from initial pokings-around it looks like I save around $150 per ticket going out of Toronto, and surprisingly, Buffalo doesn't save me that much -- certainly not worth the ticket to Buffalo from Hamllton and the extra irritation. But the Toronto price is still around $450 for the RT, which is ouch. What happened to those super cheap flights I used to see? blah.
posted by the dief at 4:12 PM on September 24, 2011

Best answer: The software company who makes the engine behind most flight search sites, ITA, has their own version online that gives a completely unbiased picture of what airfires you can buy and for how much. It's here. You can't buy the fares from the site -- you'll need to go direct to the airline for that -- but it will let you experiment with all the usual stuff -- different airports, times of day, lengths of stay, and so on. Have fun.
posted by randomination at 5:10 PM on September 24, 2011 [1 favorite]

(If you put YHM, BUF, YYZ in as your departure city, it'll allow you to enter from one airport and depart from another, potentially saving you bundles...)
posted by randomination at 5:13 PM on September 24, 2011

Response by poster: Yeah, thanks randomination -- ITA's Matrix is basically what I've been using to benchmark. Glad to know it's a good one to use.
posted by the dief at 5:19 PM on September 24, 2011

Best answer: Have you tried your dates through DirectAir (flies out of Niagara Falls, NY) or Southwest (flies out of Buffalo)? Both sometimes have lower priced/more convenient flights (and neither airline shows up on ITA, at least last I checked).
posted by flex at 6:34 PM on September 24, 2011

Also look at JetBlue's fares from Buffalo to Orlando. They're also not covered by ITA.
posted by donajo at 1:24 PM on September 25, 2011