Fare Fight?

It takes luck to snag the kind of deal I found on Delta Air Lines for a spring flight to Istanbul. I owe it to Kayak.com, a "meta-search" travel site that scans hundreds of fares on airline and online-travel sites, then links customers to those sites for booking.

A routine morning check showed the flights I'd been tracking for weeks dropped from $1,400 to $989.

Within seconds, Kayak linked me to Delta's website and the itinerary I selected. I hit "Review and Purchase" and bought the tickets. An hour later, the price was back to $1,400.

Fares on other European flights plunged that day, then quickly disappeared, causing some to suspect a pricing error. Delta wouldn't say what happened, but I was more convinced than ever of the value of online-travel search sites to ferret out the best deals — fast.

Now a standoff with the airlines threatens to dilute the usefulness of these sites, or in some cases, cut them out entirely.

Find out more here in my Travel Wise column in The Seattle Times.