Airfare Strategies

[paborn]

Fair enough. But consolidators are an entirely different matter. I'll look into it, but from my business days they have a horrid reputation, especially if something goes wrong.

 

By the way, what do you mean by "fictitious flights"

[gerefan]

In the UK some have a rotten reputation, which is why I say read the reviews.

There are plenty of websites.

How it works outside the uK I don’t know.

[paborn]

Fictitious?

[CurtisD]

I get alerts from Scotts Cheap Flights. Pretty random, but every so often something comes along that fits my schedule.

Opportunistic opportunities aside, I plan trips by using the calendar feature in Google Flights to identify the seasonal trend in prices and spot generally good periods and then the ‘Great Price!’ dots on the Kayak calendar to pick the exact days, assuming I can be that flexible.

I always select my seats in advance to avoid middle seats. Sometimes this necessitates calling the airline directly and increasingly it seems you need to pay for this ‘privilege’. I think it is worth it.

Trips with multiple destinations get quite tricky. I usually start by using the multi-city options on Kayak and Expedia and see what they come up with. Then I compare the price of the unbundled pieces. Sometimes one is better, sometimes the other and the differences can be surprisingly large at times.

However, if a stop is only a connection stop, I always get the single bundled booking on one ticket. That way you just go through transit. No mess with immigration, baggage collection and then finding the different airlines have different baggage rules (on a single ticket the most favorable rules take precedence). If you book separate tickets you have to read each airline’s rules and pack your bags to fit the meanest.

As others have pointed out the relative cost of airfare versus accommodation depends on class of travel/type of accommodation/length of stay. On business trips the airfare swamps accommodation costs even when staying at five star hotels. On personal trips I go economy and so the accommodation and other costs – e.g travel to and from the airport, airport car parking, food – can quickly exceed the airfare, particularly for trips of over a week.

I like good accommodation, so part of the planning is checking hotel prices to be sure I am not hitting some local demand peak. Usually the airfare and the accommodation costs move in tandem, but not always, so I check both before booking. In the last couple of years I have been looking at both Airbnb and hotels and have used Airbnb about half the time with great success.  

[worldatlarge]

I use kayak or google flight to check on pricing but i book on Expedia because I get upgraded and get benefits when I book Hotels.

One new app to predict pricing is Hopper. It sends you notifications when prices drop. But you need to be careful as getting close to your departure date their savings stay the same but price of the actual price and predicted price are going up together. But it is a good tool when checking 4 - 5 months ahead.

[traveller123]

Fictitious?

 I understand it to be when a search throws up some keenly priced flights but when you click to get further details the price has increased usually substantially.

I don't know if this happens in the US but it certainly happens in the UK

[Guest]

In my experience that is what is the problem with many of the search engines . They throw a lot of garbage at you, hoping you will bite and not realize all the extras you might incur such as charges for baggage etc etc etc.

 

That is why when I select airlines only on Kayak, I get none of that garbage . Also when I find a fare I like and click on it , I am taken immediately taken to the airline site .  There have been a few times where the fare has changed in that few minutes but usually by pennies. Once I am dealing with the airline I have none of those problems when missing a connection or wanting to change , having to go through some site that is not actually providing me with the transportation.

 

Kayak also has that fare alert and I consider it mostly useless since a great % of the alerts are from consolidators or whatever similar to CheapoAir and by the time you click on them the fare is gone if it was ever there.

 

Again you have to select Airlines Only on Kayak in order to get rid of all the useless offers.

[paborn]

I want to thank you for this. It's humbling to find that I never figured out the airline connectivity part of Kayak. This removes my fear of booking on other than airline sites and using this model will, I'm very sure, save me money. Maybe I can get my hotel bills higher than my air!

[vinapu]

In my experience that is what is the problem with many of the search engines . They throw a lot of garbage at you, hoping you will bite and not realize all the extras you might incur such as charges for baggage etc etc etc.

 

 

correct,  but I recall few occasions that I was expecting inflation of advertised  fares and still final price I paid was published  one.

 

My advice is still to click on them , it's better to be disappointed than miss really good airfare.  

[Guest]

Bad experience has taught me that a few $ on a long journey quickly becomes worthless when there is a mechanical and you need alternate flights or you miss a connection . Trying to call even reputable companies like Expedia to get the changes you need create problems I don't want and resolving the problem takes much longer usually to resolve. Many other non - reputable companies will do as little as possible.

 

I realize that some travelers may never have experienced these type of delays , missed connections, lost baggage. But if they ever do and they bought the ticket from the airline , it will be less miserable getting to your destination or getting a Hotel room if you are stuck in an airport.

 

The lowest price is not always the best choice. IMHO especially when it represents a tiny % of your total spending for the trip.

[thaiophilus]

The "review site" I use counts the number of fatal crashes the airline has had in the last 20 years.  That's reviewing facts not opinions.

Where an airline makes a habit of crashing, wherever possible, I use an alternative.

 

Do they normalize by the number of aircraft the airline owns, number of passengers carried, passenger miles travelled?

If not, those figures may be facts but what you can infer from them is very limited. Even if normalized, they are still not very useful. Fatal crashes are rare events (at least for airlines visiting first-world destinations, or the regulators would ban them pretty quickly :-)  so statistically they are outlying near-random noise on the tail of the distribution.

 

Serious accidents usually only happen when more than one thing goes wrong at the same time, and often procedures are changed as a result of the accident investigation, so the same combination of events won't happen next time. On the other hand, some lessons learned are then forgotten, so a "safe" airline may become less safe through complacency. Also, 20 years is a long time in corporate terms, and the management of today's airline may have nothing in common with what it was 20 years ago.

 

Simple example: airline A makes two daily long-haul flights per day and has had one fatal crash in the last 20 years, airline B has 500 regional flights a day and has had two fatal crashes. Does that make airline A twice as safe as B? Then consider Airline C which has had none at all. Are they "infinitely" more safe than A or B?  Or are we just looking at events that are so unlikely the statistics have no predictive value?

[paborn]

Fair enough. Is there a site that reviews such things as food, in-flight service, lost luggage, poor customer service, lack of inter-line agreements ( luggage transfer, etc. ) pitch of seats, the width of seats. etc. I know these things are subjective but so are restaurant reviews. 

[Guest]

you can get a lot of that information on Flyertalk.com

[Guest]

Do they normalize by the number of aircraft the airline owns, number of passengers carried, passenger miles travelled?

 

A good question.   I usually do that myself, although with the objective of being approximately right rather than precisely wrong.

 

I know British Airways & Air France are roughly the same size, yet Air France has had about 4~5 fatal crashes in the last 20 years and BA has none.     So Air France makes my non-preferred list.     

 

I have, for example, completely refused to fly Aeroflot and Air Malaysia when going to the respective countries on business.

[fedssocr]

Fair enough. Is there a site that reviews such things as food, in-flight service, lost luggage, poor customer service, lack of inter-line agreements ( luggage transfer, etc. ) pitch of seats, the width of seats. etc. I know these things are subjective but so are restaurant reviews. 

 

seatguru.com has a lot of that info

 

experflyer.com is also a useful tool. I have the paid subscription so I am not sure exactly what is available on the free version.

[farangyai]

My strategy is to buy my businees or first class ticket in Bangkok from an experienced travel agent there.  This required me to initially buy a one-way ticket from USA to BKK, then each time I buy a round trip ticket starting with departure from BKK and have my return ticket for my next trip.

[paborn]

OK, why?

[farangyai]

Because buying the tickets in Thailand yield a third to half (or better) off normal pricing.  The travel agent is also more aware of special offers such as low mileage upgrades to first class and other offers not easily identified via online searches.. 

[Travellerdave]

Whilst being in a position to afford business class my frugal upbringing prevents me from travelling that way and paying the substantial extra cost (around £2000 for MAN > BKK), despite persuasive friends making remarks like “what’s money for ?.”

However one supplement I have paid for my current trip is as follows....

For MAN to BKK in November there was about 10 airlines offering economy fares ranging from £420 to £700 return. These are about the same as what I paid 18 years ago when I first discovered Pattaya.

They all offer a reasonable seat, a meal and some seat back entertainment although I would not book flights involving more than 3 hours for changing planes.

Why therefore not choose the cheapest ?. This would likely mean 100% full flights and many families in transit to the Indian Sub Continent with screaming babies and huge amounts of cabin luggage. Also groups of young loud guys.

I paid £70 more for an A380 flight and for one leg I had 3 window seats to myself which could be arranged to form a virtual bed and on the other a spare seat next to me. Better cabin service an no queues for the toilets and the ability to stretch the legs with a walk down the aisle.

I can’t say I enjoyed the flights but they were certainly tolerable. I always laugh when I hear the pilot saying that he hoped economy passengers had enjoyment. No for me 12 hours in economy is not enjoyable !

[Guest]

Whilst being in a position to afford business class my frugal upbringing prevents me from travelling that way and paying the substantial extra cost (around £2000 for MAN > BKK), despite persuasive friends making remarks like “what’s money for ?.”

Good attitude. It's all relative. I could probably afford it, but it would be a ridiculous expense and I have to stretch the funds over 30 years or so (hopefully).

I have, however, promised myself that if the stock portfolio gets to X in today's money, I will fly business class for long haul.

 

 

 

For MAN to BKK in November there was about 10 airlines offering economy fares ranging from £420 to £700 return. These are about the same as what I paid 18 years ago when I first discovered Pattaya.

They all offer a reasonable seat, a meal and some seat back entertainment although I would not book flights involving more than 3 hours for changing planes.

(Having satisfied myself that MAN is Manchester, not Manila).

I suppose these are all indirect. If there are no direct flights from Manchester, there is perhaps a perverse advantage in that you have a much wider choice of indirect flights ?

[billyhouston]

(Having satisfied myself that MAN is Manchester, not Manila).

I suppose these are all indirect. If there are no direct flights from Manchester, there is perhaps a perverse advantage in that you have a much wider choice of indirect flights ?

 

 

With no direct flights there is the choice of, amongst others, LHR (no!), CDG, AMS, FRA, various other European airports and the usual collection of those in the Middle East. It is often cheaper to fly through these European hubs than to fly from them. I used to use MAN-CDG-BKK-CNX and it was substantially cheaper than flying ex-CDG. In the old days you would simply tear off the first coupon, but these days they can insist that you fly MAN-CDG and will cancel your flight if you don't.... it's all in the Terms and Conditions. Flying, these days, MAN-HKG-CNX means one fewer flight, one fewer trip through security and an A350-900 rather than a clapped out Air France 777 which is configured, on the CDG-BKK, to carry 468 passengers. 

[vinapu]

 despite persuasive friends making remarks like “what’s money for ?.”

tell them you need to save money for other pleasures.

 

I rather spent the same money on 4-5 long time offs than pay extra  for premium economy or whatever they call that racket

 

 

 No for me 12 hours in economy is not enjoyable !

lucky you , 12 hours only !

[farangyai]

When you are big and very tall, business class is a must, not a choice when flying 23 hours to get to Bangkok.  It has nothing to do with choice or lack of frugality.

[gerefan]

Padborn, sorry I have been away and have not explained fictitious bookings.

It’s simple...put in any date on a website then check their prices. Nothing sinister.

You will see that Google Flights comes out £50 more than Traveltrolley on Eva Air flights from LHR to BKK.

[paborn]

Oh! Thanks, I do it all the time I consider it just checking fares.