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 Cheapest
airfare for international flights
For exotic locations,
don't count on the Internet
Search engines like Kayak
are great for finding flights within the U.S. but
sometimes they're not so good for flights that
start or end in places like Asia, India, or Africa.
That's because not all foreign airlines make their fares
available to the search engines, and even those which do
sometimes don't list their best fares. International
engines like Momondo
and Mobissimo
sometimes do better, but even they sometimes miss fares
offered by certain airlines.
So what do you do? First off, try a travel
agent. If you've been used to buying U.S. fares, you
might have gotten in the mindset that travel agents
usually can't do better than what you can find on the
net. Well, that changes as soon as you're talking
international fares. Case in point: Once the best fare I
could get for Japan to India (Osaka to Delhi) from Kayak,
Orbitz, etc. was $1641. I walked across the street to a
travel agent in Osaka and got a price of $1108 -- a
whopping $538 savings. (And yes, the budget price
included taxes and all applicable fees.)
I had a similar experience in India, trying to get
a flight to Hong Kong. I spent hours on the net and I
think the best I could come up with was around $1200. I
mentioned my problem to the hotel staff, and they said
they were sure they could arrange a ticket for me. I
asked them to go ahead, and sure enough, they did, for
around $566 -- less than half price! (I tipped
appropriately.) The point is, you just can't expect all
international flights to show up in the search
engines.
If you go this route you need to make sure that
you're not being scammed by buying a fake ticket, and
that's especially true in India. But as long as you
work with staff at a hotel you should be okay, because if
they scammed you then you could tell the police exactly
who they were, so they're not likely to do so. Just don't
buy from someone who doesn't have a permanent business
location.
(Incidentally, those tickets I just mentioned were all before I stopped flying, because flying causes
climate change. Now I travel by train and cargo ship, and I bought carbon
offsets for the travel I already took.)
Okay, here's the last tip on travel to or from
exotic locations: Find the airlines that serve the
country you're flying to or from. For example, a Google
search turned up this list of airlines
flying to India (sorted by which countries/areas they
fly from). You can then check the airlines' websites or
call them to get fares, which will often be substantially
cheaper than what you can find in the search engines.
Finally, if you're planning an around-the-world
trip full of one-ways rather than roundtrip/return
flights, remember that for some inexplicable reason,
round-trip tickets often cost less than one-way tickets.
So make sure you check the round-trip fare as well, since
it might be cheaper than one-way.
U.S. to Bermuda,
Cancun, etc.
USA3000
offers service between select U.S. cities and
Bermuda, Cancun, La Romana, Puerto Plata, and Punta Cana.
In Sept. 2004 we checked and found a roundtrip fare
between Baltimore and Bermuda for $160 (!), while the
best Orbitz could find was closer to $400.
Other international
sites
Other sites we found which have good
international fares are:
- U.S. to/from Canada: Air
Canada
- Canada to everywhere: Sears
Travel
- Australia to Australia: Fare
Hunter
- Other international, especially Europe:
Mobissimo &
Momondo.
- Momondo's flexible dates feature is awesome. It
gives you a GRAPH showing the price for every
single day in any month you choose. Sweet!
Unfortunately, this feature doesn't always work,
though.
Tip for flying into
Europe
Kelly Fine writes: "We found that it was much
cheaper to fly to London on one airline and fly from
London to the Continent on another airline. This seemed
to be true no matter what city in Europe we wanted to go
to. And it was impossible to find a cheap flight from
anywhere to Bratislava, so we found a flight to Vienna,
which is only a little over an hour by bus from
Bratislava. Flying into central and eastern Europe is
much more expensive than flying to western Europe."
Courier travel: A thing of the past
For years I used to mention the great deals you could get as a courier, by
carrying documents or packages in exchange for a deeply discounted
fare. But over the years I had to slowly remove each courier
website from my list as they went out of business, and now there are
pretty much none left. Well, there might be a couple, but they
can't really save you any money.
So what happened?
- The Internet now lets companies send documents quickly and cheaply, so fewer couriers are needed.
- Post 9/11 regulations make it harder to transport items that aren't actually yours.
- The fact that airlines now charge for checked baggage
makes courier travel a worse deal (both for the courier company as well
as for the traveler).
- Travelers now have easy access to discounted fares
through the Internet, so they can already save a lot compared to what
they might have had to pay in the past.
Here's a good article from MSNBC which explains the change. Sorry, the party's over.
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 Thanks
for visiting, and I hope you liked the site.
I'll leave you with a couple of hand-picked
ads.
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Find
which travel days are cheapest
If your travel dates are flexible, just enter
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Being flexible with your travel dates is our #1 tip
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Travelocity.com
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If you liked my guide to Cheap
Airfare, you might like some of my other
sites:
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Summarized Tips for
getting the cheapest airfare
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Be flexible with your travel dates (click
"flexible dates" at Travelocity,
and see our flexible
dates tips).
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Book at least 2-3 weeks in
advance, 30 days for intl. flights.
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Fly mid-week if you can.
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Check fares at nearby airports (e.g.,
Newark, NJ instead of NYC). Most search engines
have a checkbox to do this automatically.
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Check roundtrip fares even if you're
traveling one-way. Round-trips are often
cheaper, for some strange reason.
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Travel on Thanksgiving Day itself instead
of the day before Thanksgiving.
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After Thanksgiving, return on Friday,
Saturday or Monday instead of Sunday.
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Fly on Christmas Day itself instead of
the days before Christmas.
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If you're traveling to more than one city,
use the engine's special Multi-City
search.
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Use the best website for your particular
situation. See our complete
tips.
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