I would like to know what people do to get cheaper flights to the US once they have gotten the visa. Just want to hear some ideas. Do peole find one way to be more expensive than round trip? How does immigration look at one way vs. round trip?

I think if you ahve an immigration visa then you will try to get a one way ticket as you will be migrating to the US for life.
I travel to Pakistan a lot to see my wife and have found that going through a travel agent has worked out best for me.

Round trip tickets are not an issue. Usually (not always) they are significantly cheaper than one-way's.

Airfares change from day to day (even hour by hour) depending on the airline, destination (and departing) location and time/season. Many on line sites can help -or a travel agent also.

Immigration won't care what type of ticket you have, if you're going to have a k1 visa. I suggest kayak.com for looking at airline prices.

Kayak does a pretty good job, but I just got a ticket for $300 cheaper than Kayak by going through a travel agent. Before buying any ticket online, I would call a travel agent to see what they can do.

I agree with mmarlo

The two best places I've used are Best Travel Store and Just Fares I have purchased tickets through both places, and was highly satisfied.

Both of them were better priced than any other service I could find.

I worked with Mark at Just Fares, and he was great to work with. He can be reached by email at mark@justfares.com, or you can reach him by phone or fax below:
Toll Free: - 1-866-253-0126 Ext-1015

Fax: - 1-206-204-2120


Those are the two places I'll be checking with for tickets for my next visit, and for Annie's ticket to USA.

Unfortunately, from my experience, all those websites (expedia, priceline, cheaptickets, etc.) only work for flights originating in the USA, or maybe Canada. At least it doesn't search for flights leaving from Prague, even though they are USA-bound. I find it weird, because it works just fine the other way round (San Francisco to Prague and back). I get tickets online from local travel agencies - that works best for me.

One reason why Kayak is better than Expedia, Orbitz, and many of the other online search engines is that it does not restrict itself to specific airlines. I think each of those places must have certain agreements in place with the airlines. Kayak will return for example flights on SWISS and British Airways, but I have never seen those foreign airlines on those other sites. But, a travel agent's search engine is even more powerful than Kayak because while Kayak can find for example SWISS flights to Chicago, it apparently can't combine that flight with a connecting flight on a US carrier like United from Chicago, say, to Detroit. The databases that travel agents can tap into can give those kinds of options.

Even Kayak, though, does not search Emirates, which I saw from using their website offered cheaper fares than anything I found on Kayak or other engines, but ultimately I decided that the extra hours that it would take my fiancee going through Dubai wasn't worth the few dollars I would save.

It is true that some of the online search engines do not allow the purchase of tickets that do not originate in the US, but others do, and I was finding tickets, just not the cheapest ones, for my fiancee's flight from Nairobi to Detroit through Kayak, Expedia, and at least one of the other major sites (but not Orbitz).

Kayak

A one way ticket should never pose a problem, but we have seen Vjers having a problem trying to depart and being forced to purchase a round trip before boarding. It totally depends on the airline you are flying. double check with the airline and make sure your SO understands the documents in hand are all that is needed to the POE side.

Best thing is to compare the prices,go to a travel agent and check on some sites online.
Usually One way is more expencive than all round trip,I would always go with all round trip.

he got a one way ticket...401 USD..the round trip was almost 700...

Hi. I've look around alot and I have never found anything cheaper than www.cheapoair.com I am not familiar with the travel agent idea. I'd look into that first and then look at www.cheapoair.com Let us all know if you find a really cheap rate by going through a travel agent. Take care.

I often use many of the travel sites for foreign air purchases. I guess it depends on the travel agent but I find that, recently, travel agents usually offer deals that can be found elsewhere if one searches. I would recommend the following websites where I have seen very low fares from time to time (I would suggest trying all of them and seeing which one gives you the best rate, because it can vary from day to day):

www.kayak.com - Have seen very low fares here. They search a lot of sites, but not all.
www.sidestep.com - Another great one. They also search a lot of sites and some that kayak doesn't.
www.mobissimo.com - I found my trip through this site recently. Allows searches with foreign origins also and searches some sites that the others don't.
www.qixo.com - Another one that searches numerous sites.
www.itasoftware.com - Shows general ticket availability but no links to buy tickets.
www.bookingbuddy.com - Allows one point of entry of flight info and allows searches on numerous other travel sites.
www.farechase.com
www.bestfares.com
www.farepath.com
www.cheaptickets.com
www.cheapoair.com
www.flights.com

If you don't want to search through all of these. Using a combination of the first three will usually get you a fare which is pretty close to the lowest available.

Also, try www.internettraveltips.com, which provides a listing of the website owner's favorite travel sites. Lots of great info and travel sites.

Hope this is helpful.

Lately I've been using http://booking.farecompare.com/?tab=flights which puts a little nicer interface in kayak.

for ultimate flexibility, I use http://matrix.itasoftware.com/cvg/dispatch/prego which has a query language so that you can say things like "I only want Emirates on the first leg and either United or American on the second and we must pass the Los Angeles".

One other hint when round trip prices are high, you can often just fly 1 way business class for the same price as that round trip price (assuming you only wanted one way to being with, of course).

I agree with checking with travel agent. I thought I was doing great by shopping on-line for a ticket. I was really proud of myself. For some reason I decided to call a travel agent just to get a comparison. Low and behold she got me a ticket and two nights in Bangkok at a nice hotel for $200.00 cheaper than I was going to pay on-line just for the airline ticket! Now I will always check with an agent before buying on-line.

reach449

I agree with reach449. I, too, was feeling so proud of myself for finding a flight online. Then, I, too, decided to ask local ticket agents, just to see how much better a deal I would be getting online... only to find out that the local agents could get me tickets for a hundred to two hundred dollars less. I dilly-dallied though, so the cheapest ones got booked, and i ended up with the second-best. But still! Much better than having gotten tickets online.

This is a great thread. Me and my fiance have been looking at tickets. I will also bring up the idea to him to check with an agent to compare prices.

Well I'm stumped.

I just took the advice of this thread and called up a local travel agent... The guy on the phone said "Have you looked at the airline websites? We can't do cheaper than that". I couldn't help but laugh. The guy sounded so disinterested in my phone call. I'm pretty sure that <insert travel agent here> would be fairly underwhelmed knowing that they have this guy working for them.

Hmm it must be different, depending on what country you're at.. but really, I got mine for like 727USD, all taxes included, through an agency. Checking the airline's website, it's listed as 1,2XX USD, plus taxes. Let's just say it was worth a shot

It probably depends on the agent, if they work for a consolidator, possibly what country you're flying to, etc. For more complicated flights and to destinations that aren't 'standard', it seems you should always at least check with one or more travel agents. Possibly for more common routes, the best you may be able to do is through online sites--sites that search across airlines and from the airlines' sites themselves.

My fiance did not get a good quote on price from an agent. We plan on him coming here 6/8. I wonder does he have to enter through LAX? Can he come through San Fransico.

Yeah, and the problem is that most agents won't tell you if they work with consolidators. There are a number of consolidators you can find online though. I've found them to generally be a few hundred dollars less in some cases then a travel agent or the airline itself.