Has anyone tried to “bid” for your airline tickets through Priceline?
Bids are accepted or denied within minutes. You will see a page saying searching and then in a few minutes or so it will return another page telling you the results. You will also get an email. If accepted, your credit card is charged and you cannot back out.
How could one bid for air tickets online?
You could try ebay.com. There may be travel agents that put tickets up for bid on this site. I do know that this is how they sold some of the tickets for the maiden flight of the Airbus A380 with Singapore Airlines. Also, try Priceline.com. You don’t really bid, per se, on the tickets, but you give them your “bottom line” price for a particular ticket and if you are within their parameters, they will sell you that ticket for the price you set.
Tips for winning airline ticket bid on Priceline.com?
Airlines (or hotels for that matter) will not accept low bids on air routes / peak travel times that are likely to get sold out at higher prices. They will accept bids on competitive routes and off peak travel times that are not likely to sell out.
Like a flight from New York to Orlando during spring break for the kids is a route that you are unlikely to get a bargain. But that same trip in mid October should yield you some bargains.
Also, keep in mind that with airlines, priceline makes you accept flights at any time of the day, so you could conceivably lose 1 or two days of vacation if they make you take the outbound late flight and the early flight on your return.
For that reason, I only use priceline for hotel stays and car rentals (not flights)
Is it safe to bid/buy airline tickets on E-Bay? Any good or bad experiences?
Under NO circumstances do you buy air tickets on e-bay. Period. Air tickets are for the person in whose name the ticket is issued and no-one else. They cannot be transferred. Either go to an airline website or reputable travel agency website or to an IATA travel agent (the latter if your journey is a bit complicated – even if you have to pay a fee)