Flying on a budget
While it’s great to do research on the Internet, nothing lets you know if you can really be happy in a country like living there for a few weeks. But flying to all the countries you’re interested in can get expensive. Here are some tips that I used to keep my costs down when I fly somewhere.
Save money with frequent flyer programs
The first thing to look at is the airlines that fly to the countries you want to visit. Join the frequent flyer programs for all of those airlines. Even if you don’t think you’ll use a particular airline, you never know what the future holds.
Now you want to start looking at which airline gets you the best airfare. I have some more on how to do that later in this post. That airline is the one you want to focus on for getting your air miles. It doesn’t do you much good to have a few air miles on one airline, because you won’t be able to get any free tickets that way.
Now you want to visit the airline’s frequent flyer program webpage. They usually have dozens of ways to earn miles that don’t involve flying. You can often earn miles by using a certain credit card, staying at a hotel, renting a car, shopping at affiliated online stores, using your grocery store’s shopping card, and several other methods.
Get as many of your transactions earning you miles as possible. You can even get big bonuses by just signing up for a credit card. At one point, I got 50,000 for getting an American Express card (that I cancelled within a few months). That’s almost enough for a round-trip from South America to the United States!
You can also look for special programs that earn you miles. If you’ve ever seen the movie “Punch Drunk Love”, where Adam Sandler’s character gets over one million miles from buying pudding, that’s based on a true story.
If you have some free time, you can earn miles on “mileage runs” – inexpensive trips over long distances that you only take to earn miles. Once I spent two Saturdays flying from Houston to the northeast, just to earn enough miles for elite status (which let me get some upgrades to first class seats during the next year).
The best place to find out about the odd loopholes in frequent flyer programs is the website FlyerTalk. Another great site with lots of flight information is Airlines of the Web.
How to get your flight for free (or almost free)
On one business trip (paid for by the company I was working for), the airline overbooked the flight and asked for volunteers to be “bumped”. When you’re bumped, you are put on the next available flight and receive a voucher you can use for flights in the future.
In my case, since I didn’t have to be home right away, I volunteered to be bumped. The airline got me on a flight later that day, with a first-class seat, and gave me a voucher for $450. I kept an eye on airfares, and eventually found a flight from the US to London for $477. It cost me $27 to fly to London for a weekend.
If you have some free time, and don’t mind a little risk, you can look for flights that are often overbooked. Don’t check any luggage (so they don’t have to pull it off the plane), and let the gate agent know that if the flight is overbooked, you are willing to be bumped. Just make sure that you get a confirmed seat for your next flight, unless you want to try to be bumped for that flight too.
Where to find the best prices on your flights
The easiest way to find low prices on airline tickets is at the many online travel websites. Some of the common sites to go to are Travelocity, CheapFlights, Orbitz, Kayak, Expedia, and PriceLine.
You can also look for consolidators. They buy a large number of tickets at once, getting a better price from the airlines. Then they can offer tickets to you for less than you would normally pay the airlines.
Overview
The best way to find out of you will be happy in a country is to visit it yourself and spend some time there. Just because someone on the Internet likes, or doesn’t like, a particular country, city, or town doesn’t mean that you will feel the same way.
Take advantage of these tips so you can fly overseas without emptying out your wallet. If you’re looking for more tips on how to travel cheaply, I found a downloadable book you can buy that would help you. It’s a few years old, so a couple of things aren’t really relevant any more (like flying for free as a courier), but there is still lots of good advice in this 200+ page guide that will save you money when you travel.
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