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What is the best way to save on airfare?

B

burgundyna

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Hello everyone,

I have truly been awed by the level of sophistication involved in being a good TUGGER (or is it TUGger or TUGer). I hope someday to become as adept as some of you in "working the system."

Now, although with TS the cost of room and board is no longer such a financial barrier to travelling, there is still the cost of airfare, which is incredibly high and fickle. Thus far, the only frequent flyer program that has come in modestly handy was Southwest. However, recently I've found that SW is not as modestly priced making it a less desirable choice and therefore causing us not to fly so frequently with them. :)bawl: Gone are the days of the $19 and $29 one way tickets to Phoenix, Arizona).

Well - does anyone have any system they use to save on airfare they would like to share?

Sarah
 
Yes - award miles. We use the Starwood AMEX card for almost every cent we spend (haven't figured out how to pay the mortgage with it yet) and earn enough points for 2 round-trip tickets to Hawaii every year. With the SW AMEX you get 5K bonus miles every time you transfer 20K Starpoints to an airline. (20K Starpoints = 25K air miles.) With most airlines, the exchange rate is 1 Starpoint for 1 mile. To make this work, you have to be obsessive about using the card for everything you buy, and pay it off every month so you don't pay interest. The card fee is $50 a year. We use a Hawaiian Air VISA for merchants who don't accept AMEX to make sure we don't miss any points.
 
DeniseM said:
We use the Starwood AMEX card for almost every cent we spend (haven't figured out how to pay the mortgage with it yet)
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Off topic. Denise, call them and ask if you can.

I'm always amazed at how well that works. Maybe you'll lead them into a new area of money making for them and in the meantime get tons of points and save money too! Who knows?
 
bigrick said:
Off topic. Denise, call them and ask if you can.

I'm always amazed at how well that works. Maybe you'll lead them into a new area of money making for them and in the meantime get tons of points and save money too! Who knows?
Click to expand...

Our mortgage company will not allow us to do so. Apparently there are laws against paying for credit, with credit. Stupid laws..... :D
 
It's called a merchant's agreement

We have been working on this at work. The merchant's agreement with say, Visa, would strickly forbid your mortgage company from taking payments on debt with another debt.

I agree, it is stupid but if I was the mortgage company, the one who truly owns the house, then I would not incur fees for something that I have no problem getting now. And, if they don't pay the bank would eventually forclose. I guess the cost of forclosure could get them thinking, though...

DeniseM said:
Our mortgage company will not allow us to do so. Apparently there are laws against paying for credit, with credit. Stupid laws..... :D
Click to expand...
 
One helpful site is www.kayak.com the site searches numerous different fares and then provides you with links to the site that has the fare you want. You do not wind up purchasing through Kayak.

Another thing to keep in mind is that in many cases you are no longer required to buy r/t tickets. With the advent of airlines like SW, JetBlue, AirTran etc., buying a one-way ticket on one airline and a return one-way on another is affordable. I've actually done this on several recent trips. Even some of the legacy carriers will now sell one-way tickets in some markets (now I know they'll sell one-way, but what I'm referring to is the fact that they'll sell them at a reasonable price).

I've mainly done this because (in the case of JetBlue) they had a great flight time going out, but a rather cruddy one coming back. For a recent trip to Tahoe, I flew JB to Sacramento, and then flew Delta back to Boston. Total airfare just about $300.
 
I've had my RCI visa for years (used to be MBNA, now it's with Bank of America). It pays for all of our flights in a family of five, and we even have points left over every year. We use that card for every penny we spend as well.

Jana
 
Try connecting

We have had some luck on longer flights by using two different airlines and connecting at a major hub. We have also flown back a little early in the evening to save money. For example, when we went to Florida a couple of years ago, our resort stay was Friday-Friday. We flew out of Sarasota a little after 5 p.m. Thursday night as opposed to havomg a flight that left at 10 a.m. Friday morning-how much more are you going to see/do from 5 p.m. until 6:30 or 7 a.m. the next morning anyway? :shrug: Our kids thought it was cool because they had never really flown at night, and they had three whole days instead of two before they had to be back to school, which gave extra time to make up homework.
 
There is another way....
If you have the time, volunteer to be bumped. We could have had 4 rt tickets when we went to visit our son, but on the way to Boston, they couldn't get us on another reasonable flight. We did get 2 on the way back though.
Ron
 
Taking the bump is a great way to plan for and get pricing down on airline tickets! I would not accept the free ticket voucher, however, as that puts you up against the very limited "free ticket inventory" along with the FF ticket folks, etc. If given the choice, take the $$$ value and use the voucher to buy a ticket. And that way, you also earn more miles on the ticket you buy with their money. Sometimes if you tell the gate agent you would prefer to not have the ticket voucher but instead want a cash value voucher, they will accommodate you. It all depends on how much they really need your seat. I'm sitting on a $300 NWA voucher that I got last fall coming home from a business trip. I would rather have $300 that I can for sure use, rather than taking the free continental US ticket that I may or may not be lucky enough to schedule.
 
PriceLine.

We use something like Expedia or Travelocity to determine a baseline economy fare, then see if we can beat that on PriceLine. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

The last time we named our own price for PriceLine plane tickets, PriceLine turned down our offer & suggested we consider booking flights at a price shown in a separate section lower down on the web page. We did. Shucks, our offer that PriceLine didn't accept was for more money than what PriceLine steered us to after we were turned down. Go figure.

Meanwhile, my son the experienced traveler says sometimes the airlines offer lower fares via their own web sites than what's available via PriceLine or HotWire or any of those. Who'd a-thunk?

-- Alan Cole, McLean (Fairfax County), Virginia, USA.​
 
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