My advice would be to not make assumptions about the cheapest way to fly. I flew on many different airlines, and often the major carriers were cheaper than the discount lines. Also, I thought one way trips would cost a fortune and that I would have to fly back home after each interview. On a lark I asked an airline about getting a ticket from Cleveland to Dallas to Charlotte to Cleveland and the flight was cheaper than what the two round trip tickets would have been. I don't generally use Yahoo or Expedia to buy tickets but I use them to give me a ballpark price. Then I go to the company website. You can sometimes find better prices and you usually have a better choice of travel times. Finally, consider renting a car in one of your arrival cities and and knocking off a couple of places from there. For example, of you flew into Cleveland you could travel to Pittsburgh, Akron, and Toledo very easily. You could even do Columbus and Detroit if you didn't mind driving a little further.
