Purchasing tickets online is one of the great way to save money when planning a trip. However, some sites in trying to show a lower fare online are not posting the true airfare. While this is not illegal, the practice will make a consumer work that much harder to get the best deal.

From the LA Times:

Air travel shoppers on the Internet visit, on average, more than three websites before making a purchase, according to PhoCusWright, a Connecticut-based research firm. Yet websites differ greatly in how they display taxes and fees, which can make an apples-to-apples comparison difficult.

Some websites display the full and final price, including all taxes and fees, on the first search-results page. Others display only the “base fare” on that page. Depending on the destination, a base fare can be more than $100 lower than the final fare a consumer has to pay. On these sites, it is not until well into the booking process that the total price is revealed.

I searched for an airfare between LAX and London for mid-October on American Airlines’ (www.aa.com) and United Airlines’ (www.united.com) websites. At American, I found a $428 fare. At United, the fare was $650 for the same dates, an apparent savings of more than $200. (These fares may no longer be available.)

But a few clicks later, the price of the fare at American jumped $110 to $538 when all the taxes and fees were figured in. Still a significant savings over the United fare in this instance (which included all taxes and fees in the first number quoted and therefore did not increase) but not as great as at first glance.
…

American Airlines’ website at one time displayed the full fare at first glance. But last November it changed its policy and now displays only the base fare until much farther into the booking process.

“American has to be responsive to the marketplace,” said Harteveldt. That marketplace includes low-cost airlines such as Southwest and JetBlue, which advertise their base fares and add taxes and fees later in the booking process.

To be fair, the total fare is displayed to consumers before purchase on all airline and travel-agency sites. It’s just that getting to that total fare now requires more work on some. It’s an area where the big online travel agencies seem to offer an advantage to consumers.

“The agencies translate everything into the same language,” Harteveldt said. “You see what your real true ticket price is going to be.”

Each of the big three — Expedia, Orbitz and Travelocity — displays the total fare in the first search-results page. But just in case this was too easy for consumers — giving them what they want, according to the research — Orbitz in July changed how it displays airfares, showing both the base fare and the total fare next to each other. Travelocity made a similar change in June but, just to keep consumers on their toes, only for its domestic fares. Expedia simply displays the total fare.