Booking Flights Using a Booking Engine vs the Airline Direct

I did a search at Expedia's Comparison Engine, at Orbitz, Priceline, and again at the individual airline pages. My search was from New York to Honolulu, leaving on July 7th and returning on July 14th. All of these resulting fares should be taxes and fees included and one or no stops.

Hotwire doesn't tell you who you are flying with unless you book, but their best flight was $712, coming back on a red-eye.

United Airlines
Expedia: $875
Orbitz: $877
Priceline: $874
United: $870

American Airlines
Expedia: $770
Orbitz: $772
Priceline: $769
American: American site did not let me sort by price, and they didn't show me prices until I picked a leaving and return flight out of a dozen choices, and I couldn't find a combination under $1000 before I got sick of doing that. They do show prices up front if you choose the flexible dates option, and that way their best price was $850, but the dates were off.

America West
Expedia: $1028
Orbitz: $762 when I searched at 6 am, $902 when I searched at 10:30
Priceline $758
America West: $971 * not including fees

Continental
Expedia: $866
Orbitz: $970
Priceline: $865
Continental $817.34 ** not including fees

Delta
Expedia: $1159
Orbitz: $930
Priceline $783 at 0900, $753 two hours later
Delta: $1045

Northwest
Expedia: $1616
Orbitz: $1291 ** $871 for two stops
Priceline - none
Northwest: $1521.84

US Airways
Expedia: $1664
Orbitz: $995
Priceline: $776
US Airways - US Airways site would not show me prices until I picked a departure and return flight out of several - I tried one and got a price of $1621- probably not the cheapest available. I tried to search by price and found no available economy flights in July at all.

ATA
Expedia: none
Orbitz: none
Priceline: $906
ATA said there was nothing available for the times I searched.


Most Notable Discoveries:

Priceline had the lowest price for almost every search, sometimes only by a dollar though. I'm guessing they make a small cut in their markup to make this possible.

I see no reason to go to any of the Airlines sites directly, unless you want to be really thorough. Their prices were almost always higher than what the discounts seen at the sites giving you comparisons and choices.

Airline sites that offer a lowest fare guarantee on their site were only lower by a few dollars.

Searching at different times of the day can make the fares hundreds of dollars lower - if you don't like the price you see, try again in two hours

Two or more stops can save you money only sometimes. Use the comparison engines to figure this out easily