Given that I have a three week break between my summer class and the official start of the semester, I’ve been doing a lot of travel planning. With that includes many searches for flights and such. I figured that I’d list my suggestions for the best flight search engines.

First, is Kayak. Kayak is an aggregate search engine, meaning that unlike the other major flight searches (Orbitz, Travelocity, etc), it compares flights from over 100 different places. I’ve consistently found cheaper prices here than any other site. Add to that its interface design, which incorporates some excellent work to allow you to seamlessly and dynamically filter the search results, and you’ve got the best flight search engine I’ve ever seen.

Second, and only for those flying within Europe, is SkyScanner. SkyScanner lets you choose flights from many of the budget airlines in Europe, shows you which days are cheapest to fly that route, and shows you, in one glance, the prices after tax, which can more than double the cost of the ticket. A great place for inter-europe travel.

Third, also for those in Europe, is WhichBudget, which tells you what budget airlines fly out of what airports and to where. Again, a huge help for planning trips within Europe.

Thats it for now. I’ll add other worthy sites as I find them, or watch the links to the right.