1. Log-in/Forgot Your Password

To access your MyTrips/Alerts/Newsletter account, simply log-in using your e-mail address and your password.

If you have forgotten your password for My Trips, simply click the “Forgot My Password” link on the right side of the page (see image below). If you have set-up a password clue question, you can either answer the question or click the “Reset Password” button. If you have not set up a question or choose not to answer it, simply click the “Reset Password” button, and an e-mail will be sent to you that provides a link to the Reset Password page. You can then reset your password, and your trip information won’t be affected in any way:

2. Your Options Once You have Logged-in

Once you have logged in, you can quickly manage your MyTrips/Alerts/Newsletter account. You can add a trip, change your e-mail address, edit your profile, delete your profile and more:

3. Change Your E-Mail Address

In order to change your e-mail address, log-in to MyTrips and click the “Change My E-mail Address” link on the right side of the page (see image below). You will then need to enter your original e-mail address, your password, and your new e-mail address. You then need to verify your new e-mail address by entering it in the “Verify New E-Mail” tab. Once you’ve verified your new e-mail address, click “Submit,” and your e-mail address will be changed:

4.Change Your Password

In order to change your MyTrips password, click the “Change My Password” link on the right side of the page (see image below). You will then need to enter your original password and your new password. You’ll then need to verify your new password by entering it in the “Verify New Password” tab. Once you’ve verified your new password, click “Submit,” and your password will be changed:

5. Edit Your MyTrips Profile: Step 1

To get started editing your MyTrips profile click on the “Edit My Profile” link on the right side of the page (see image below):

6. Edit Your MyTrips Profile: Step 2

On the Account Setup page (see image below), you can enter your first name, last name, your password hint question, and the answer to your hint question. Once you’ve done that, you can click “Next” and move onto the next step in the profile editing process or “Save Profile” if you wish to return to the editing process later.

7. Edit Your MyTrips Profile: Step 3

The Preferences page allows you to establish if you would like e-mails sent to you in HTML format (if you have questions, click on the “?” for help). You can also sign up for the FareCompare weekly newsletter, and set up your preferred departure point and airline (if you have an airline preference). Click “Next” to move on to the next step or “Save Profile” if you wish to return to the editing process later.

8. Edit Your MyTrips Profile: Step 4

On the Personal Information page (see image below) you can enter your gender, date of birth, and address. ***Note: Your personal information will not be shared with anyone. Once you have completed this step, you have made it through the profile editing process. Click “Save Profile” to save any changes you have made, or click “Previous” to go back and make changes on a previous page.

9. Unsubscribe to Newsletter and/or Alerts

On the Edit Subscription Preferences page (see image below) you can unsubscribe to the FareCompare Newsletter and/or the airfare alerts you have been receiving simply by clicking on on the unsubscribe links provided. If you do not want to unsubscribe, you can either click “Back to My Trips” or “Cancel.”

***If you choose to unsubscribe from the Airfare Alerts, all of your saved information will be deleted, and you will have to sign up again if you wish to start receiving Airfare Alerts again.

FareCompare.com does not sell airfare directly. We assist you with shopping and decision making, but purchasing is done through one of our travel partners. We do not have access to any of your personal information to check on your behalf.

Please directly contact the travel partner you used to purchase your tickets to check on your purchase, make changes, request refunds, or for customer service questions relating to your trip.

**Checking with your credit card company to see if a hold for the funds has been placed on your card may help you glean which travel partner was used, if you are unsure.

Q: Why are Return Dates Not Offered for Limited Flexibility Trips on My Trips?
When creating your trips on My Trips, you’re given three choices for flexibility. Each choice provides different options, which will give you the best opportunity to find the cheapest flight for your desired trip. Here is a breakdown of the three travel flexibility choices and how they help you find the lowest listed airfare for a specific trip:

Very Flexible
If you’re very flexible for travel dates, you’re not tied down to either a departure date or a return date. You will receive alerts any time a deal is detected that meets your criteria for the trip you have selected.

When you select Very Flexible, you will not be offered dates for departure or return.

***NOTE: You will receive an alert for every deal we detect that fits your trip’s departure city, destination, and pricing criteria.

Limited Flexibility
In order to best serve travelers with limited travel flexibility, we provide selections for Earliest Departure Date and Latest Departure Date. Departure dates generally have more restrictions and have a much greater affect on the cost of a trip than return dates. Restrictions on return dates can involve a Saturday night stay, and the cost of an airline ticket can fluctuate slightly based on a return date. However, your choice of departure date will have a much greater affect on price changes for your specific trip. Therefore, by design, we leave the return date open for this type of trip.

By setting parameters for the departure date, travelers with limited flexibility will have a much better opportunity to take advantage of the cheapest listed airfare for their specific trips.

***NOTE: You will receive an alert for every deal we detect that fits your trip’s departure city, destination, and pricing criteria. However, you will not necessarily receive all of the alerts (Historical Deals/Recent Email Alerts) listed on our calendar and results pages. You will not receive alerts if they do not meet all of your criteria, including the travel dates (earliest departure and latest departure) you have selected. Airfare effective date, expiration date, blackout dates, season rules, and other airline stipulations will also determine whether an alert is sent to you.

Fixed Flexibility
Fixed Flexibility is for those travelers who have specific dates on which they must take their trip. If you select Fixed, you will have the opportunity to set both your departure date and your return date. The notifications you receive on price changes for your trip will be based on those specific travel dates. You will only receive alerts for deals that fit the specific dates you have selected for travel.

***NOTE: You will receive an alert for every deal we detect that fits your trip’s departure city, destination, and pricing criteria. However, you will not necessarily receive all of the alerts (Historical Deals/Recent Email Alerts) listed on our calendar and results pages. You will not receive alerts if they do not meet all of your criteria, including the travel dates (departure date and return date) you have selected. Airfare effective date, expiration date, blackout dates, season rules, and other airline stipulations will also determine whether an alert is sent to you.

FareCompare.com is not just another airline quoting system - there are dozens of them on the internet and statistics show most people shop 5 to 6 different sites before purchasing, so you are well aware of them.We come to work each day working on new airfare technology to try to save you both time (the hassle of hunting for that cheapest advertised price) and money (ferreting out the bets deals from millions of airfare price changes that occur each day).

There is no perfect solution but rest assured we are the only company working day in and day out on making it easier to get the best airfare deals and providing you the information you need to make the best airline ticket purchasing decision.

Several users have experienced trouble using the site, and have received an error (”Cannot contact farecompare.com airfare server”), or the results never finish loading after a search has begun.

Unfortunately it is difficult to troubleshoot this issue since we couldn’t duplicate the problem on any of our computers at the office. Finally, though, we caught a break - a colleague of one of our employee’s had the same problem several users have described. After discovering what his issue was, we thought it might be worthwhile to see if others are affected by the same setting.

We’re not sure which piece of software made the change to his computer, but since most of the folks that have complained about this error are AOL users (as he is), we’re suspecting the AOL software adds this to the computers settings.

Unfortunately, it is only one of many possibilities for this error, and is also a client side browser issue so it is not something that can be fixed for everybody by changing something on our servers.

OK, onto the results…

We found a Windows registry key (see image):

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings

Value ReceiveTimeout = dword

The value on the PC we looked at was set to 60 seconds. What this means to Internet Explorer is any website that takes longer than 60 seconds to return data - cut off the connection.

We also found that this setting is not present when the Microsoft default settings for Microsoft Internet Explorer are used.

Once we removed (deleted) this key from the registry, we had no further problems.

If you do indeed have that key set, it may have negative effects on any site that has a large amount of data to send (as we do) or that just takes longer than the setting in that key to load.

****The information we’re providing above and below is for informational purposes only, we are not encouraging you to edit your Windows registry, if done improperly it can damage your Windows software and your computer may no longer function properly. Please consult Microsoft or a local computer professional if you require assistance.

We’re including Microsoft’s KB article that describes how to backup, restore and edit the registry:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/322756

Q: Why are Return Dates Not Offered for Limited Flexibility Trips on My Trips?
When creating your trips on My Trips, you’re given three choices for flexibility. Each choice provides different options, which will give you the best opportunity to find the cheapest flight for your desired trip. Here is a breakdown of the three travel flexibility choices and how they help you find the lowest listed airfare for a specific trip:

Very Flexible
If you’re very flexible for travel dates, you’re not tied down to either a departure date or a return date. You will receive alerts any time a deal is detected that meets your criteria for the trip you have selected.

When you select Very Flexible, you will not be offered dates for departure or return:

Limited Flexibility
In order to best serve travelers with limited travel flexibility, we provide selections for Earliest Departure Date and Latest Departure Date. Departure dates generally have more restrictions and have a much greater affect on the cost of a trip than return dates. Restrictions on return dates can involve a Saturday night stay, and the cost of an airline ticket can fluctuate slightly based on a return date. However, your choice of departure date will have a much greater affect on price changes for your specific trip. Therefore, by design, we leave the return date open for this type of trip.

By setting parameters for the departure date, travelers with limited flexibility will have a much better opportunity to take advantage of the cheapest listed airfare for their specific trips.

Fixed Flexibility
Fixed Flexibility is for those travelers who have specific dates on which they must take their trip. If you select Fixed, you will have the opportunity to set both your departure date and your return date. The notifications you receive on price changes for your trip will be based on those specific travel dates. You will only receive alerts for deals that fit the specific dates you have selected for travel:

You get an airfare price drop email alert   or You are “Researching Cheapest Airfares” from the FareCompare.com home page and we show you the cheapest published price calendar. You select your dates and hit “Find Flights” to check for seats and the quoted price doesn’t match up — why not?

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90+ percent of all airfares that are purchased each day are filed with a clearing house in Washington DC called ATPCO (Airline Tariff Publishing Company). This company was once a government agency but changed to private ownership (owned by 20+ airlines) after airline deregulation in 1978. Hundreds of thousands of airfare price and rule changes flow continuously into ATPCO each day and in turn they distribute them at specified times later that day to a handful of subscribers worldwide that provide reservation systems including the airlines themselves (FareCompare.com is one of these handful of subscribers). Savvy air travel shoppers should know these approximate delivery times to save both time and energy shopping …

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While trolling for business class fares to Frankfurt and Budapest I noticed that a flight to Budapest going through Frankfurt is cheaper than just to Frankfurt. What would prevent me from buying a ticket to Budapest if I wanted to go to Frankfurt and never using the second half of the ticket?
-Marvin

Hi Marvin,

What you have run into is called the classic “Hidden City” situation. Airlines do not like this situation at all and try their best to prevent this from occurring. Most of the airlines have a policy on this but in the age of purchasing your tickets online it is very difficult to prevent. If you do it on the outbound portion of a round trip, the rest of your itinerary will be canceled (so don’t).

Here is a sample letter from American Airlines Agency Site which sums up most airlines policy:

Dear,

Let me take the opportunity to clarify American Airlines position on hidden city or point beyond ticketing. Purchasing a ticket to a point beyond the actual destination and getting off the aircraft at the connecting point is unethical. It is tantamount to switching price tags to obtain a lower price on goods sold at department stores. Passengers who attempt to use hidden city tickets may be denied boarding, have the remainder of their ticket confiscated and may be assessed the difference between the fare paid and the lowest applicable fare.

Because we compete with other airlines with different route structures, we sometimes find it necessary to give a traveler who is traveling beyond a connecting point a better price than travelers who are just traveling to the connecting point. For example, a passenger who is traveling to Austin, Texas from Los Angeles can go on one airline via Phoenix for a price that is lower than the cost of traveling on American between Los Angeles and Dallas. If we want to offer the same price to Austin as the other airline, but the only way we can get travelers there is via Dallas, we find ourselves charging the Austin passengers less than the Dallas passengers.

Although the issuance and usage of hidden city tickets is not illegal in the sense that one could be fined or sent to jail by the government, it is unethical and a breach of a passengers contract with AA. Both tariff rule 100AA and American’s Condition of Carriage, which are incorporated into every ticket sold by American as part of our agreement to carry the passenger named on the ticket, bar hidden city ticketing. In addition, it violates the agencys’ contract to act as an agent for American Airlines.

If American Airlines continues to lose revenue as a result of hidden city transactions, the fares we charge must inevitably rise.

Sincerely,

I cant understand how to change the departure cities under the new format. I am a big fan-please help
- John

Hi John,

Once you login, all your “trips” will be listed, you can delete a trip and enter a new one (Just press delete) or you can change an existing one by pressing the Edit button.

If you continue to have trouble send a note to customer.service@farecompare.com and someone will assist you.

My family wants to take a vacation in Hawaii next August. Your site was a great help in getting surprisingly good prices. We will be traveling in a group (~30 people). Is there a good way to do this - either on your site or with group desk?
-Bill

Hi Bill,

You can only purchase normally up to 4 to 8 people (depending on the airline) with an online transaction on a single itinerary (PNR - passenger name record). This type of transaction is much better done at the group desk of the airline — once you know the price point you are shooting for after researching on FareCompare.com you should be able to get the entire group booked through the airlines group booking department.

Most of our airline pages have a quick link to the group booking information page (for example American Airlines at this link).

Aloha

Why are the Taxes on my airline ticket so much? I booked a flight to Panama City, Panama(PTY), departing in February 2008. The fare was $509.00 with tax of $258.00 for a total of $767.00 I booked the same flight in February of 2006 with a fare of $484.00 with tax of $83.00
-Sam

Hi Sam,

it appears that you have run into both a small tax increase and a whopping fuel surcharge increase since 2006. International fuel surcharges are running from $120-180 right now and really should be part of the base airfare, but that are normally quoted in the “taxes & fees” portion of your airline ticket. Fuel surcharges make it hard to compare things apples to apples in come cases…

Can an entire family find love and happiness in Las Vegas? Of course they can, it they travel with FareCompare! Rick shows you how to pull it off. AND, how to save money.

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