Ok, so you read Part 1 of the series to get your sea legs. Awesome! Now I am going to wade into some deep waters with “advanced” tips and tricks to get that airfare cheaper. Remember, my goal with this series is to save you hundreds but cost you thousands. With that in mind, here’s what I’ll cover:
Two Tickets, One Trip
This method involves booking two separate tickets to get you to a destination leveraging a fact that I alluded to in the Part 1 of the series. Chicago and New York tend to have a lot of competition (meaning a lot of airlines flying there) and therefore lower airfare. You can use this to your advantage. How? Let me give you an example.
Let’s say you are wanted to travel from Atlanta to Paris from September 29 through October 9. If you type those city pairs and dates into Google Flights (Part 3 of the series will be a tutorial on how to use Google Flights), you will discover this is the cheapest flight option:
If you read Part 1 of the series (and I’m sure you did….right?), you know that you hate America if you spend over $1,000 to fly to Europe. This is especially true if you fly during shoulder season. So one approach to find a cheaper fare may be to check what’s the price to fly to Paris from New York or Chicago. So when I check prices for ORD (Chicago O’Hare airport) to CDG (Paris) on those same dates, I discover this gem:
Ok, that’s a lot better. But how does this help me, you ask? Well, let’s take a peek at flights from Atlanta to Chicago on those days to link up with this one:
Wow! Let’s recap. I started looking for flights. I found a nonstop for over $1,000. That made me cry. But then I tried the “two tickets, one trip” method and I can get there for $523 RT. Boom! [Insert favorite mic drop GIF here]
Two Tickets, One Trip, Cont.: Interline Baggage & Connection
The “two tickets, one trip” method works great. I personally used it when I went to Iceland. I found a great price from JFK to KEF for $400/person on Delta. Then, I booked a separate ticket on Delta for the Atlanta to JFK leg. Using a combination of miles and vouchers, I got my family of 4 to JFK for a total of $300. Essentially, I booked a round trip ticket from Atlanta to Iceland for about $475/person.
But like everything in life, there’s no free lunch. When you employ this method, you are wading into a very technical airline territory called Interline Baggage. Interline baggage broadly refers to where a person is traveling between two cities on two separate tickets. Airlines have very specific rules about these situations. I’ll link to the big 3 US airlines’ policies below:
I wouldn’t recommend reading through those policies unless you have insomnia. Long story short, United and Delta will through check your bags between the two tickets if you are connecting to another flight on the same airlines and/or their partner airlines. American will never through check your bag. On my trip to Iceland I mentioned earlier, Delta checked my bag all the way through. Meaning, I checked my bag in Atlanta and didn’t see it again until Iceland.
If you run into a situation where the bag will not be checked through, don’t worry. Yes, you will have to leave security, claim your bag, and recheck it. But if it will save you $500 a person, then it’s probably worth the hassle. Just ensure that you have enough time in the airport. I would recommend at least 3 hours in a situation like this.
Airfare Hot Spots
I’ll take a break from the hardcore airline nerd talk for the next tip. While I have been successful eventually finding cheap airfare for any place I wanted to go, there are cities in Europe that show up on the cheap airfare websites more frequently than others. These cities, in no particular order are:
- Paris
- Madrid
- Barcelona
- Milan
I lack hardcore data to back up this claim, but anecdotally these 4 cities show up constantly. To be honest, I find myself searching airfares on Google Flights constantly and I’ll find cheap deals to these cities even when they aren’t mentioned on the airfare sites. Bottom line, if you’re trying to decide where to go in Europe and/or you haven’t been to Europe at all, I’d recommend searching for airfare to these 4 places first. Even if you don’t want to spend a lot of time in the city, take advantage of the cheap airfare along with my next tip below.
Greek Island Method
This method is similar to “Two Tickets, One Trip,” but instead focuses on getting you over the pond as cheaply as possible and then utilizing cheap transportation options in Europe once over there. Here’s how it works.
Let’s say you fly into Milan. You can now advantage of this method via cheap, intra-European flights. Europe is filled with low cost carriers that fly almost anywhere you want to go. Now the service will be on par with Spirit here in the US, if not worse. But it will get you from point A to point B. Be aware, though, they usually will charge you for anything that isn’t nailed down. You name it, they will charge for it: seats, food, drinks, bags, carry-on’s, etc. So the base fare will be very low, but be sure to add up all the fees prior to booking.
To finish out the topic, though, let me further illustrate this point. You can quickly search google flights and find nonstop flights to several cities in Europe. Quickly searching for Thursday, June 11, I find the following one way deals:
- Oslo $74
- Amsterdam $31
- London $22
- Athens $77
- Berlin $33
The list could go on and on. But you get the point. It can be incredibly cheap and easy to get from point A to point B in Europe. Additionally, I like to couple this method with the below method to plan some truly incredible trips.
Open Jaw
Open Jaw is an old airline routing term. It simply means that you fly into one city and out of another. Let’s say you fly into London but out of Paris. That would be an open jaw. I really enjoy booking open jaw flights. I have done this several times on my travels and I have two more booked as I type this post.
For example, I have flown into Manchester in Northern England and out of Inverness (a city in the heart of the Scottish Highlands). According to Google Maps, these two cities are about 370 miles or 6.5 hours of driving apart. While I could have done a more traditional “round trip” journey, I felt that it is was a lot of back tracking to do that. I would rather not have to see the same scenery twice and/or lose a day traveling back.
The big watch out here is car rental. If you are renting a car, a one-way rental can be very expensive, especially across international borders. However, in the above example, I was able to get a car for only about a $50 premium to take one way from Manchester to Inverness. So that was a no brainer. I would just recommend doing a quick car rental search before booking an open jaw flight if you are planning to take a car one way. Often times, it is better to fly one way, using the “Greek Island” method and just have two different rental cars.
But I’ll finish this tip by emphasizing how much I like this method. It is my preferred method for trips now. I have booked 4 open jaw trips and plan to employ this method frequently in the future.
Hidden City Ticketing
*Warning: This tip is very easy to get wrong and can jack up your entire trip. Only do this if you are confident in your travel skills. Also, do not abuse this method as the airlines will find and kill you a la Liam Neeson (slight exaggeration)*
Hidden City ticketing refers to when you buy a ticket between two cities with a connection in an intermediate city which is your ultimate true destination. Let me explain that in English.
I used this on a domestic reservation from Dallas to Atlanta. A ticket between those two cities on my mandatory travel day was very expensive. However, if I booked a flight on Delta from Dallas to Orlando with a connection in Atlanta, it was half the price. So I booked that cheap ticket, got off the plane in Atlanta, and went on with my life.
There are two huge watch outs with this method. First and foremost, if you skip any leg of your journey, the rest of your journey is canceled. So you want to have the leg you skip be the last leg on your journey. Second, if you check a bag, normally your bag is checked all the way through to your final destination. The exception to this is when you are traveling internationally into the United States. I’ll run through an example to show you what I mean.
Let’s say you are traveling from Zurich to Miami with a connection in Atlanta. You really want to end up in Atlanta. When you land in Atlanta from Zurich, you will clear immigration (passport control) and customs. Practically speaking, this means you will claim your luggage and then have to recheck it. But if you want to just stop in Atlanta, then you just go on with your bad self.
Next Steps…
So in Parts 1 & 2 of this post series, we have discussed several ways to attempt to save on airfare. In the final part of the series, I am going to do a deep dive on how to use Google Flights.