An Oz Fest lunch stop
In Part One of outlining how we search out bargain airfares, we shared our "secret" to finding bargain trips.
Find a cheap fare (whether paid with cash or air miles), buy it, and then decide where you'd ultimately like to travel, adding flights or train trips to build your itinerary. There's an element of serendipity - think magical mystery tour - that we've always found just plain fun.
But what if we have a commitment to be in a certain place at a certain time? That can be a challenge.
Two of our trips earlier this year were in that category, our April canal boat rental in France and our May Oz Fest meet-up in Darwin, Australia over the U.S. Memorial Day weekend. How did we manage?
First, we check out the same sources we do for any trip, regularly checking fares on the websites of airlines that fly there.
It's a great advantage to have enough points (air miles) in your account to utilize award flights as an alternative. For example, we will book a "placeholder" fare with points so that we know that, worst case, we will be able to reach our destination.
When buying a ticket with cash, it's important to remember that round trips or open jaws (an open jaw is basically flying into one city and returning from another) are usually (not always) cheaper than two one-ways
We actively seek out possible alternative departure and arrival airports. We enjoy the advantage of living within driving distance of SEA (Seattle) and YVR (Vancouver), along with our regional BLI (Bellingham) 20 minutes away. If we're flying internationally, we'll also consider repositioning flights if we find a significantly cheaper fare from a distant airport. While that may look extravagant, we're seeking out business-class flatbeds for outbound overseas flights, so a well-priced domestic flight can actually be cost effective.
We've utilized a couple of other strategies more than once. First, when most airlines change your flight times more than one hour, you're allowed to change to any other available flight with the same origin and destination from the day before to the day after your original flight. Second, some airlines, including Alaska, allow customers with status to make same-day changes for free. This has allowed us to change to a more convenient flight into or out of little BLI that we'd originally avoided because of the cost.Even without status, the same-day change fee can be very cost effective.
For our canal boat trip to France, we found the cheapest flat-bed flight to Europe was between Seattle and Frankfurt on Condor. From FRA, we bought a flight to NTE (Nantes, France), on LH (Lufthansa) and a short train ride onward to our ultimate destination. We found similarly priced flights for Kathy's brothers between DEN (Denver) and MUC (Munich).
The price of flights can vary greatly from one day to the next. For our return flight, we had no problem spending an extra couple of days in Nantes in return for saving a lot on the fare
As we previously mentioned, we changed our outbound trip to DRW (Darwin, Australia) several times. We started off on Starlux Airlines with a stopover in TPE (Taipei, Taiwan), and ultimately flew US (United) nonstop from LAX (Los Angeles) to MEL (Melbourne), with a 10-hour stopover there in an airport hotel before flying onward on the same UA award ticket with VA (Virgin Australia, a UA partner) to DRW (Darwin).
In summary, our "secrets" to booking an affordable fare boil down to starting as early as possible, continually seeking out cost effective alternatives right up to departure, and being flexible and creative in regard to scheduling and routing throughout.It's definitely helpful to have enough frequent flyer points to consider award flights as an alternative.