A Guide To Great Offers For Frequent Flyers
It is much stress-free and economical travelling by public transport than it is travelling by air. This is because of so many dynamics involved in air travel. The travel costs involved in air travel is complicated but once you understand the cost factors involved, you will find it as stress-free as taking a bus and cheaper too.
So let us look at how to avail great offers for travelling by air.
1. Consult ticket wholesaler:
To target a set audience, airlines take help of a consolidator. These are people who work directly with the airlines and buy tickets in bulk and then offer great discounts to a target group of travelers. This proves beneficial for the passenger as they get tickets at a discounted rate. However, the drawback of this is that it does not offer great flexibility if you need to change your tickets.
2. Search for last minute offers:
Most times airlines offer cheap airfare on Wednesdays to travel for the coming weekend. These are great last minute deals, and you can find them on the airlines website or through their email subscription.
These deals are great for those travelers who do not have a set travel agenda and do not mind a certain flexibility in their travel.
3. Benefit from airline gift cards:
Costco and Plastic Jungle are great resources for buying airline gift cards. For instance, you can find 10% discount on American Airlines tickets through Costco.
If you are unable to find discounts, you can still get offers such as 6% cash back on your grocery store purchases by buying full price cards through American Express Blue Cash Preferred scheme.
4. Purchase frequent flyer miles:
If you are a regular air traveler, you must be familiar with flyer miles offered by airlines. Sometimes airlines also have a sale on these frequent flyer miles. This is the time to buy them. For example, US Airways offers deals such as a 100% bonus on any miles purchased. This might mean a 100,000 miles for a cost of 50,000, so you end up paying $1,500 for a business class round trip to South America, Europe or Asia.
5. Learn more about the hidden city:
At times, it becomes much cheaper to fly through a city for your final destination than directly to the destination. For instance, the price of the ticket from Philadelphia to Houston and then onwards to Dallas can come out to be much more economical, by $100, than flying directly from Philadelphia to Houston. So Houston becomes your hidden city.
With this plan though, there are some drawbacks, such as you cannot do any baggage check-in, as this will go directly to your final destination. You may also need to check the airline’s regulations and see whether this is not against their policy
6. Be on the lookout for special fare deals:
This applies if you have children or older citizen traveling with you. And these days only a handful of airlines offer these deals. But it never harms to look around.
7. Get back to back ticketing:
Even though most airlines do not like this practice, it is not against the law. What this means is that to avoid high prices of mid-week travel, a passenger can book two round trips but starting from two different start points. For example, the first ticket could be from Houston to Boston and the second trip could be from Boston to Houston so essentially the traveler would use the first leg of the first ticket, Houston to Boston, and the first leg of the second trip, Boston to Houston.
8. Learn to complain, politely:
If you are a regular traveler, and there have been some issues in your travel, do not hesitate to write a complaint to the airlines, but do so politely. This will ensure you get an impressive credit to use in your future travels.
9. Days of the week matter:
At times, in order to fill up the empty seats, most airlines offer discounts on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, so be on a careful lookout for special deals on these days. You may set price alerts on search engines to alert you as soon as there are discounts offered by airlines for particular days.
10. Consider overnight flights:
If you do not mind the disturbance in your routine offered by overnight flights, then why not consider this option. It is much cheaper and you do away with the cost of an extra night lodging.
So no matter where you want to travel, there are plenty of opportunities you can avail of to get the best flight deals around. Always be vigilant and you can save plenty of cash on your air travel.
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