 Are you looking to fly during Christmas, New Year or during peak summer dates? Most of us would have this dilemma of using the holidays for travel but paying exorbitant prices. This could be due to the limited vacation time or kids school being shut during this times. If you are the one who cannot avoid peak dates travel then below tricks might help at times. Trick 1: Book two one-way tickets: At times of low season this might be a completely bad suggestion, but when you are looking to fly in high season, this might be a neat way to reduce your flight cost. The reason being that most 3rd party aggregates and booking sits such as Expedia would want to issue a single ticket for your round trip. The simple reason being booking two separate one-way tickets would require separate cancellation/change fees if any of your plan to fly changes. Although some times the 3rd party flight booking sites would display tickets as two one-way, the chances of that being efficient in time and cost is low. Below is an example of search with last minute peak season ticket where the round trip flight fare from SFO-DEL for low connection time jumps from ~$2095 to ~$2778.  SFO-DEL-SFO from Dec 25th to Jan 2nd. Below you can see what happens when we instead search above as two one-way tickets. The total fare for the round trip becomes ~$2160 which is much lower than booking a round trip ticket.  SFO-DEL Dec 25th one-way ticket  DEL-SFO Jan 2nd one-way ticket Trick 2: Book one-way + round-trip ticket (tagging a free / almost free one-way ticket): This is another neat trick which can help you get an additional one-way to the same original destination or if you are creative to the destination where you plan to visit in the future. The idea here is that instead of booking a round trip you book a one-way and add a round trip ticket from your destination to your source. For e.g. instead of booking "SFO-DEL-SFO" you can book "SFO-DEL" (one-way) + "DEL-SFO-DEL" (round trip). So for "SFO-DEL" one-way you would pay ~$931 and booking "DEL-SFO-DEL" round trip is just $1246 with Alitalia!!  DEL-SFO-DEL with Alitalia from Jan 2nd to Mar 18th. Search done using Momondo.com As you can see from above that although the flight from "DEL-SFO" is 2 stops and little longer you are getting a free one-way for future date ("SFO-DEL" in March) with just additional $15 compared to booking "DEL-SFO" one-way ticket.
So, the next time you plan to travel in peak times and are looking to purchase paid ticket do remember the above two tricks before you make your purchase. Disclaimer: Some of the links used in the post may be referral links and earn referral to this site. We appreciate you supporting the website.
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Lot of folks would have heard about "hidden city ticketing". In short the idea behind hidden city ticketing is to book a ticket to a final destination which is cheaper then your actual destination by using your actual destination as a stopover. So for example you want to fly from Dallas to Los Angeles but the flight to Las Vegas from Dallas via Los Angeles is cheaper and so you book this ticket with intention of getting down at Los Angeles (The hidden city). So, how about extending this idea on international trip where your real destination is the "hidden city" but it is much cheaper to fly there as a stopover rather than a destination. This would allow you to not only visit your real destination cheaper but would also allow to visit additional city/country for less than the cost to your real destination. For example you want to fly non-stop Singapore Airlines flight from San Francisco to Singapore (hidden city) but booking a non-stop flight would be expensive. Instead of that you buy a ticket to a destination which Singapore Airline serves via Singapore and is much cheaper. This way you not only visit your real destination but as a bonus you visit an additional city or country at no additional cost. Let's see a real example here: San Francisco (SFO) to Toyko (NRT) roundtrip with Toyko as the real destination: Let's say you want to visit Tokyo from San Francisco in Feb 2019. The cheapest ticket to the destination for few dates in Feb 2018 for 10 to 15 days is shown below. As you can see the cheapest for this trip is $726 and that flight has long layover.  SFO to NRT roundtrip for 10 to 15 days  SFO to NRT rountrip from Feb 6th to Feb 18th How about changing few things here. Instead of flying to Tokyo as a destination how about flying there as a stopover. Let's look at an example by modifying the destination to be a cheaper place and using Tokyo as a stopover. Below is an example with search date used by few trial and error selections.  SFO to HKG via stopover in Tokyo (NRT)  SFO to HKG with stopover in Tokyo (NRT) As you can see from above the flight to Hong Kong (HKG) with return via Tokyo (NRT) is cheaper than the original flight. Although in the above case you need to spend 1 night in Hong Kong but you do get a non-stop flight from Tokyo (NRT) to San Francisco (SFO) during return journey from your trip and as a bonus you can visit Hong Kong for 1 night. In fact you can also extend the 1 night stay in Hong Kong to either 2 or 3 days and the cost would not change.
The above idea could be extended to any other destination you want to visit although it may not be available for all the dates. Also you would want to select an airline which has "hub" in your "real destination". One of the biggest "Con" of this is that you need to be careful of the made up destination as some of them might require a visa to visit but other than that this is perfect travel trick you can use for your next trip. Disclaimer: Some of the links used in the post may be referral links and earn referral to this site. We appreciate you supporting the website. |
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