How to travel in the front, for Greyhound prices
[QUOTE=ComeOnDown]I consider his inputs on mileage programs very useful and relevant. In fact I have printouts of some of his posts which serves as references for me whenever I get confused with all these mileage program lingo.[/QUOTE]Well, when I'm sitting around with nothing to do, I don't mind looking for some travel shortcuts, and explaining them a bit. 8 years ago, I hardly knew a thing, but I feel I'm proficient now.
The thing is, there are so many ways to backdoor special deals, that you'll only know about if you read [url]www.flyertalk.com[/url] a lot, and investigate things. It also helps to have friends who figure out some of these deals.;)
There was recently a small thread on Flyertalk about getting Delta miles for 1800flowers. Com purchases. They gave you a 2500 mile bonus on each purchase, if you entered a special code. 2500 miles is worth about $50 alone, so if you could buy some cheap items, and do it again, and again, you could have enough miles for a free biz class flight (and a lot of little 1800flowers trinkets)
After you figured the bonuses, plus cash back on your credit card you used to purchase these items, your cash outlay was about $700 for a Biz class ticket from the US to Argentina. Plus you now have 35 of these little gift bags to give out to the chicas for free! Or donate them to charity, and get a tax write off for $700! You don't get any miles for flying, but it's a great deal, if you know where to find it, and where to jump in on it.
UA Weekend Fares IAD-EZE $475+
Just got an email for United Airlines for a special weekend rate on United from Washington DC. Leave Jan. 28-31, return Feb. 4-Feb. 7. Add taxes, but still a good deal, for a quick trip down.
It might be the last time I use one
[QUOTE=Jaimito Cartero]Not very cheap, eh?
I think if I find another batch of cheap business class fares to EZE, I'll have free pussy for all my next trip! $1000 for coach to EZE is pretty bad.[/QUOTE]615 bucks and it's standby. Two advantages to a buddy pass, if there is an open business seat then I can sit there, second is flexibility. If I decide to stay extra day no problem.
When I first started going to BsAs and would take friends on my passes when I worked for UAL it was around 350 round trip, now that was a bargain. With 600-800 RT fairly common with shopping I think in the future I will travel coach and confirmed.
With your ability to find fares and my insider knowledge of airlines. Hmm something to think about.
Tip #3 How to get there with money left for chicas
Pricing of tickets is rather a dark art. As Salv pointed out, you can run a price search at 1pm, and then do the same thing an hour later, and you'll get big differences in prices.
If the time you're heading somewhere is a busy time, you may pay 2-3 times more money. Take Sydney for example. He paid huge bucks to go EZE to the Dominican Republic, because he wanted to go at a busy time. I'm not sure how far out he bought tickets, but buying too far in advance, or too close to departure can hurt you big time.
The sweet spot for normal tickets (Not to be confused with Jumbo / mistake or Airline wars) is 2-6 months before your flight. If you see a good deal, jump on it, even if it's not in this time frame.
You might also want to keep track of how prices are for a certain route. If you want IAH-EZE, and there is a sale every March, then hang out until March to get your ticket.
Jumbo / Mistake fares. These are when someone leaves a zero off a fare, or prices the ticket in Pesos instead of Dollars, so it's $99 to fly instead of $990. These do not usually last very long, so whip your credit card out, and buy some. My favorite is business class flights. I found a EZE-NYC ticket last May, and although I'm not in NYC, I saw the price seemed a bit low, so I checked it out. Only after checking out the fare class, did I realize that it was a business class ticket for only $450 round trip plus tax. Much better than the $6500 price they normally charge.
This fare only lasted a few hours after I posted it, possibly because an asshole called up the airline to ask them questions about the fare. If you think you've got one of these fares, don't call the airlines!
If you're an opportunity flyer, like I am, you just want the cheapest flight, and the best seat possible. While 30% of my flights will be in coach this year, I like the biz class or first class seat for my big ass. I just don't want to pay $5000 for it.
If you can go whenever you want, you'll save a lot of money. To find the cheapest fares [B]currently[/B] being offered, use Zuji. Com at the link below:
[url]http://www.zuji.com/web/content/splash_index.html[/url]
Click on the "flexible dates", and enter your cities. This is a sister site to Travelocity, but the Travelocity site no longer lets you search for international tickets with flexible dates. Sometimes you may get pricing in Singapore dollars, and many flights might be listed, but don't work when you try to select dates. This is pretty normal. You can also use:
[url]http://matrix.itasoftware.com/cvg/dispatch/[/url]
This is ITA, which is a very nice way to search for tickets, and you won't get as many phantom fares. You can only search for 30 days using the normal interface, though.
So, if you're a cheap sucker, or just want to spend your money on food and chicas, what do you do?
Find airlines that give their best flyers free upgrades to business class. Many airlines have upgrade certificates (Usually referred to as SWU, System Wide Upgrades) that you can use on a flight. Things have tightened up lately, and often you can only use them if you buy a higher coach fare, and then use miles, or one of the SWU's. AA and I think CO now also have Co-pays of hundreds of dollars you pay in addition.
If you're willing to fly on a plane that makes more stops, I'd recommend Copa, as they give free upgrades to Continental Airline elite (they share the same elite program) and even upgrade Northwest Airline elites a day or two before the flight. You do end up stopping in Panama City, but it's not a bad break.
How else to fly in the front? I briefly mentioned using miles to upgrade. This can work great with some airlines, and not at all, with others. Many airlines now require you to be one of their elite members (usually flying 25k a year) to even use them.
One secret that often saves me big bucks is to check how much fares are when they originate in the city I'm flying to. That's how I found my Delta Biz class Jumbo out of EZE. The fare was only good for flights departing out of EZE. Some people would ignore it, since how would it work if they're not in EZE?
It's simple, you either buy a one way ticket, or you nest a round trip ticket out of the US, either purchased, or using frequent flyer miles.
So, you spend $1000 for a Feb. 1st IAH-EZE ticket. You then have 2 round trips EZE-IAH that you found for $400. You spread them out over the year, so that you get 3 trips for only $1800, instead of $3000. This is what the flights would look like:
CO IAH-EZE ($1000) Feb. 1st.
DL EZE-ATL-IAH ($400) Feb. 18
DL IAH-ATL-EZE ($0 return portion) May 1
DL EZE-ATL-IAH ($400) May 20
DL IAH-ATL-EZE ($0 return) September 1
CO EZE-IAH ($0 return) September 24
So you get three nice trips, and don't spend too much money. Now, all the pricing given here is made up. $400 fares don't happen that often, and you may not see one for years. But if you never check the pricing going the other way, you'll certainly never find the deals.
Just by flying these routes, you have enough miles to elite, about 30,000 miles. If you were a Platinum already, you'd get about 70,000 miles, or even 80,000 miles if you didn't fly DL (DL only awards 100% max miles for standard tickets, instead of 125% like CO and NW do) You're very close to a free business class ticket from just these three flights. Say you take one more flight, and spend $2500 total. You now can get a free biz class ticket, having invested only half the amount a normal ticket would cost!
I've found a few sub $400 + tax flights to EZE over the last few years. Many were when a new airlines started a route, such as Delta, or when other airlines get into wars with new entrants, or are just trying to hurt a competitor. These wars are some of the most beautiful things you've ever seen. Better than finding a $100 bill on the ground in front of Exedra.
You can see a fare get chopped in half in 10 minutes, and then be back to where it was an hour later. Don't dawdle on these fares, they evaporate quick.
One of the best ways to find out about these fluctuations is to set up a [url]www.farecompare.com[/url] fare alert. You can have it email you every time the fare drops a certain amount. I recommending setting alerts to and from EZE, so you can see all the deals. Also, sometimes Delta will have a screaming deal out of Houston, and Continental will attack back, and have kick ass prices from Atlanta.
For that reason, I would always put all hub cities into your search, as it may be worth paying $100-$200 to fly somewhere to get $400 fares to EZE.
CO hubs: IAH, EWR
DL hubs: ATL, SLC, CVG
UA hubs: DEN, ORD
AA hubs: DFW, MIA
There are other hubs for these, but those are the major ones, I think. A word of caution about Farecompare. It's a great site, but scans all the pricing for possible sales. It does not figure out a lot of the fuel surcharges that airlines are now sneaking in. AA is probably the worst US airline for this, as they can easily add $200 to the fare, instead of $60-$80 for most airlines. So, if you see an AA fare for $400, don't wet your pants yet.
Farecompare also sends you alert as soon as the fare is released, but that doesn't mean it's in the computer of the airlines/travel agencies yet. Sometimes it might take hours before it's loaded into everything. Here's an alert that I just got from Farecompare:
[B]Buenos Aires, AR Chicago from $679 down $40[/B]
[url]http://www.farecompare.com/search/year-alerts.html?departure=BUE&destination=CHI[/url]
Looking quickly, I find that it's a Delta flight. Going the opposite way, the cheapest fare is a US/UA codeshare for $150 more. The Delta flight might not even be available, so you always have to do some works to make sure the the deal is real. I clicked on a couple of days in April, but come back with nothing less than $1000 using Farecompare. Time to switch to ITA and see if it has anything better. $925 is the lowest I find.
Always check the airline's website first, and then Expedia, Orbitz, Travelocity, etc too. When a fare is pulled on the airlines own site, it may still be in the system for awhile at the other sites.
Check the major gateway cities: LAX, SFO, IAH, ORD, DFW, MIA, IAD, DCA, EWR, JFK, ATL, DEN, SLC, DTW, MSP. Most of the good fares are going to be from one of these hubs.
That's all for tonight, folks!
Just one thin dime, will get you see the amazing bearded lady!
[QUOTE=Daddy Rulz]This hobby of yours is marketable.[/QUOTE]Hey, send me some money, a fine meal (or 10 cheap ones) or some pussy, and you too can be on the Jaimito travel newsletter.:)
But semi-seriously, if you have certain cities you're looking for, let me know, and if I come across something, I'll email or PM you. I'm not saying it's free, maybe you'll have to tie Exon down and have a lactating Chica dump a pint of milk all over his face, or a fine session on Maipu or something.:)
As long as you're flexible. Some things can't easily be done. Like, "I want to go to EZE next week, and want it for $500". In most cases, it's just not going to happen. If instead, you say, "I'd like to go to EZE for $1000 or less, in business class in the next 9 months, I have 50,000 miles to upgrade", then that's in the realm of possibility.
Don't let the miles expire, merger-mania
It can be challenging to get a good award. To do it right requires patience, and knowing how to make the fuckers pay up with a good award.:)
One important thing is to make sure your miles don't expire. Recently, many have gone to a 18 month expiration time frame. However, don't despair, because all you need is *some* activity to keep your account active. Often you can donate 50 miles the Red Cross, and you're good for another year and a half.
US Air and Delta seem to be some of the worst ones for expiring miles. Northwest seems to be the best, as they have a 3 year rule on the books, but don't enforce it, at this time.
I had 3/4 of a million miles in my NW account recently, and once they announced the possible DL merger, I started spending. I went through over 400,000 miles in two weeks. Now, I will probably refund back most of these, once I see if the merger affects me negatively (if the merger goes through, even) I can also refund them for free, so it makes it so easy.
CO and UA will probably not merge, unless NW merges. NW has a Golden Share of CO that allows them to have some large control of if / when they merge. Once NW merges, then it's open season.
Flight booking engines and fuel surcharges, don't trust Fare Compare on Intl tickets
What source are you getting these from? I've found that many travel search engines don't include the fuel surcharges correctly in the pricing. What I suggest, is that you click on specific dates, and get right up to the purchase screen, and then do a cut an paste.
For instance, the rules from Expertflyer on the this MX fare:
[I] SURCHARGES.
A FUEL SURCHARGE OF USD 125.00 PER DIRECTION WILL BE ADDED TO THE APPLICABLE FARE. [/I]
So right there, you're looking at $250, which is a lot of empanadas.:) When you add the $250 onto your supposed total, it comes up the amount I listed before. You need to select the dates and then find out what the real price is. Fare Compare only tells you what the *possible* lowest fare is. Many are phantom and can't be booked, or have nasty fuel surcharges.
I recommend using ITA Software for real world pricing.
[url]http://matrix.itasoftware.com/cvg/dispatch/prego[/url]
[QUOTE=Sidney]Trying to be of service. I have tried to avoid, but Hairy's insults need to stop. Guess he wants a verbal fight? --------------------------------------------From To Roundtrip One-Way Non Stops.
Miami to Buenos Aires (cheapest roundtrip) Click on a price below to select your departure month. Currency $, USD AirlineLowest Fares - All AirlinesMar$495 total $573
Apr.$495 total $573
May$495 total $573
June$495 total $573
July$495 total $573
Aug.$495 total $573
Sep$495 total $573
Oct.$495 total $573
Nov.$495 total $573
Dec.$495 total $573
Jan.$495 total $573
Side by Side Comparison (select an Airline & Cabin. Press "Add Row") Airline: Aeromexico Air Canada American Argentinas Avianca Boliviano Continental Copa Delta Lacsa Lan Lan Peru LanArgentina Mexicana TAM Taca US Airways United Cheapest Cabin:CoachBusinessFirst Add Row[/QUOTE]
