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2013
18
January
Getting The Best Deal On Flights From Saskatoon To Phoenix
18
January
Guides
The Ydeals Noise-Free Guide To Getting The Best Deal On Flights From Saskatoon (YXE) to Phoenix (PHX)
 | There are a boatload of travel sites out there, all wanting you to think that they alone have access to some unique price list of budget airfares to Phoenix. They don't. They use marketing noise to hide the fact that there is really only one source of unique prices on air travel from Saskatoon to Phoenix. This guide will remove the noise and show you what that source is, so you can stop wasting so much time when searching for the best deal. |
What are the unique sources of prices for plane tickets from Saskatoon (YXE) to Phoenix?
Unique Source #1 - The Major Airlines
There are 4 major airlines that offer flights from Saskatoon to Phoenix (PHX), and they are: Air Canada, Delta, United Airlines, and WestJet.
Where should I look to get the best deal on a Saskatoon departure?
All you really need to do is search all the major airlines, preferably at once. My current favorite way to do this would be using Google Flights Explorer. You can enter 'Phoenix (PHX)' into the 'To' box, and see current airfares from all the major airlines out of Saskatoon. Not to mention how easy it is to browse through different date combinations.
Even if you're planning to go for a longer date range than this tool supports (currently up to 2 weeks), it will give you an excellent idea of what the typical bottom price is right now, and which airline(s) it can be found on. Use it as a starting point, and then use a tool with more precise search options, such as...
My second favorite way would be to search using Kayak. It has all the sort and filter options I need, and searches all major airlines. Click on 'Make my dates flexible' and set it to '+/- 3 days'. You may be surprised how often being a little flexible with your dates can result in a better price.
What about the thousands of other travel booking sites that have Saskatoon airfares to Phoenix?
This is the noise. There is no shortage of travel sites or brands trying to convince you that they have the cheapest flights from Saskatoon to Phoenix. The truth is though, there's only one unique source of prices that they're gathering their prices from, and that's the prices from the major airlines themselves. They can't begin to offer a lower price than the airline itself, as there's virtually no markup.
Here's a few reasons why I think Canadian travelers waste an enormous amount of potential vacation time checking multiple websites, hoping for an even better deal than the one they've already found (studies show it to be an average of 22 different sites over 10 periods of research!). The first reason is just human nature. We all want to compare airline ticket prices and make sure we're getting the best possible deal for our travel dollar.
But I truly think that the main reason is due to the hype surrounding travel marketing. With so many travel sites and holiday package brands competing for your attention, all hoping you'll book your flight or holiday through them, combined with the fact that not one of them will *ever* admit to you that their source of prices is the same as everyone else, it's little wonder Saskatoon travelers waste so much time searching for travel deals.
What about searching for low-priced tickets on the airline's website directly?
There's nothing wrong with doing that. It just tends to be a lot easier to search all of the airlines at once, with using a good search tool with a proper interface. It's amazing how poor many of the airline's flight search interfaces are. The seat fares found on any half-decent search engine will be the same as the fares for tickets found on the airline's own website.
One thing you can do is just use a search tool to search all the airlines prices at once, and then go to the airline's own site to book it once you've figured out exactly which flight you want, knowing what the price is.
What about my local travel agency or independent travel agent here in Saskatoon?
Good folks, I'm sure, but they're seeing the same prices on tickets you are. Depending on the travel agent, they may or may not charge you a 'booking fee' on top of the airfare price, for their time which is no doubt valuable. Since there's virtually no markup on the cost of flights, they really can't offer you a price that's any lower than from the airline itself, or from a search tool that searches the latest airfares properly.
When should I book a ticket from Saskatoon to get the best airfare price?
This is never an easy question to answer, as airfares are not 100% predictable. Airlines start by setting their price at a level they think will fill the maximum number of seats, based on the demand they expect to see.
If they experience less demand than they expected, they may decide to lower them. If they experience more demand than they expected, they may raise them. Unfortunately, a lot of factors that influence demand can be unpredictable.
How long a person can wait it out in hopes of a better price is a personal decision. Personally though, I am usually not afraid to watch prices on the major airlines up to about 8 weeks before departure in hopes of a better price without fear of the price rising. But everyone has a different tolerance for risk.
What about last minute deals from Saskatoon?
Last minute airfare deals to Phoenix on the major airlines don't really exist. Most major airlines, as you get fairly close to the departure date, if the airline has done their job correctly, and filled most of the seats on the plane, often decide to raise the price of airfare.
What's a decent ticket price for flights from Saskatoon to Phoenix?
From Saskatoon, flights to Phoenix (PHX) tend to bottom out around $500 to $550 (roundtrip after taxes). This is just a general guideline though, based on average demand periods of the year.
Airfare prices are highly affected by demand. So anytime you can think of a reason that there might be higher demand than usual for travel to Phoenix (such as dates when many people in Saskatoon have holiday time) you can expect prices to react accordingly.
As for the Christmas holiday period (anything between Dec 21 and Jan 5), that's a whole other level of demand, which means prices are never anything but very expensive relative to the rest of the year. As a very general rule of thumb, I find you can usually take a decent price for a flight out of Saskatoon from an average demand period and multiply it by 1.5 to get your typical Christmas price.
What about one way flights to Phoenix from Saskatoon?
You should be able to get from Saskatoon to Phoenix (PHX) for about 50-60% of the cost of roundtrip flight. Use the same search techniques as for round-trip flights, and just change the search option in your favorite search tool to 'one-way'.
What about non-stop (direct) flights to Phoenix?
From Saskatoon, there are not currently any non-stop (direct) flights to Phoenix (PHX) on any airline. The fastest you can get there is usually with 1 stopover, such as a 1 hour stopover in Denver if you fly United or Air Canada.
What about a multi-city flight? Such as into Phoenix and out of another airport back home?
Searching for multi-city flights in travel is still a bit of a pain. Even Google Explorer currently can't handle it, as there's too many possible combinations. I'm sure eventually someone (likely Google) will put enough processing power behind it and create something useful for searching multi-city fares.
But for now, you're stuck with searching one departure date at a time when it comes to multi-city fares and experimenting with different destination combinations. Most of the decent travel sites will offer a multi-city option (it should be right next to 'one-way' and 'round-trip').
Kayak would be my preferred flight search option here. Just click on the 'multi-city' option and in the first box, enter in Saskatoon to Phoenix (PHX), or whatever airport you want to fly into, and then in the second box, enter Las Vegas (LAS) to Saskatoon, or whatever airport you want to fly out of.
You never really know what you're going to get with a multi-city fare. And it really depends on what airport you choose to come back from! And of course, you're still left with figuring out the cost of getting between the two airports.
I think I've found a great deal on a Saskatoon flight to Phoenix!
Excellent! Please share it with your fellow travel lovers, they will appreciate it and thank you for it! You can post it in the YXE Deals Facebook group (click 'Join Group', at the top-right, when you arrive), where thousands of people from Saskatoon are crowd-sourcing the best deals, and sharing great travel advice.
Or if you prefer, you can always give me a shout through the YXE Deals contact form or on Twitter @YXEdeals or through Google Plus. Great deal finds are always appreciated.
Why should I trust this Saskatoon traveller's guide?
 | The info in this guide is based on my observations of the travel industry over the years, including all the thousands of websites out there, and where all the different players get their prices from and how they interact with each other. The goal is to remove the noise of travel marketing, so people can stop wasting so much valuable time searching the same prices over and over. |
But, as social proof of it's accuracy, feel free to join the YXE Deals Facebook Group (click 'Join Group', at the top-right, when you arrive) and publicly disagree with any of it, or make a comment below. Critiques are always welcome!
I think I have some travel deal info that could help improve the guide!
Great! Please post your info in the Facebook group above, or contact me directly. Suggestions for improvement are always appreciated. Let me know if you see something that seems inaccurate or outdated.
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