Booking flights from a US site

[Ralph1Malph]

Anyone have any ideas how I can book flights from an American provider in $US?

SIL, who lives in 'Fornia has told me that the prices we get from a site are different to the ones she sees in continental US. Often cheaper even after exchange rates. This is especially true for the 'domestic leg' Hawaii to LAX.

I could ask her to book them but I'd rather do it myself.

I am told it's possible but every site I go to, seemingly even the US ones, defaults to 'Au or Asia Pacific region.

Can it be done?

Ralph

[driftwagon]

i accessed some US sites years ago by using thecloak.com but this might be helpful.

[scanfor]

You could set up your browser to use a proxy server that is US based.

[Hoges]

It's well established that a return flight e.g. LAX-SYD-LAX via Qantas is usually significantly cheaper than SYD-LAX-SYD. It's complex but the all-in costs at the US-end are considerably cheaper than here. What's more, the websites are designed with a so-called "geo-block" which detects your IP address as Australia and hence the default re-direction. AND we seem to be prepared to pay more because often our choices are somewhat limited compared to markets like the USA.

As soon as your IP address says Australia many o'seas online websites produce inflated A$ prices. I've checked this out many times on the phone with my brother who settled in the US some years ago and my daughter living in London...we log onto the same website and the prices I see are usually way above what they see!!!

another example is/was software form Apple, Oracle, Microsoft etc. iTune cards bought here for example usually provided a lot less song etc for the same $ value than those bought in the USA...
Some of the big names fronted a parliamentary committee a couple of years ago and under sustained questioning finally admitted that they loaded the Australian prices, sometimes up to five times the US prices...because they could. Then they tried to make saints of themselves by publicly announcing later how they were reducing prices to Australian customers. The Adobe suite of software programmes was a prime example.
Don't expect any relief soon!

[DiscoMick]

Could a travel agent in the US do it for you?

Sent from my GT-P5210 using AULRO mobile app

[kwosie]

Try orbitz.com we used it a couple of years ago. We flew to the states with just return tickets and a car and a motel room booked for the first 2 nights/days We spent 5 weeks in the US flew all over the place South to North, West to East. We booked 5 separate flights for 4 off us in that time with 4 different airlines. I'm sure there are similar sites if you Google but this one worked for us.

[synthium]

As stated above your best bet is to either have someone do it for you in america or go through a proxy to make their site think you are in america.

[Bigbjorn]

As stated above your best bet is to either have someone do it for you in america or go through a proxy to make their site think you are in america.

Have you tried Virgin? They fly direct Bris - LA and I was able to book LA - Chicago and Las Vegas - San Francisco on Virgin. I no longer use Qantas having been stuffed around too many times.