How to Play the Airlines' Game and Win
Flying over mountains. Photo by Monica Mussack
You Can't Let Fares Hold You Hostage
Airfare is expensive. Thank you, Captain Obvious. But just thinking about it hits a nerve for many people. Yes, it is expensive, and yes, it means you have to pay what it costs. Waiting for 2019 pricing is not going to net you a trip. Most travelers focus heavily on finding the cheapest airfare. That is often the wrong question. A better question about airfare is, “Which flight is the best one for my trip?” That opens up a whole new way of thinking about airfare. Stop letting airfare hold you hostage and start comparing flights from a different perspective. What follows is a discussion around finding what works best for you with several tactics and examples to help you fight the high prices that currently exist.
Gone are the days of really cheap airfare. Travel costs. My best antidote for that is to save your money ahead of time. Stop procrastinating and recognize that the sweet spot in finding the best prices overall is one to three months for U.S. domestic flights, and two to five months for finding the best Europe flights, for example. You can always pull a Paul if you want and gamble on when the prices will drop, or you can pull a Wendy and see if you can find flights several months out. But there are times when you can't plan ahead. Recognizing you are playing the game to win still fits even if you have to book later than you originally wanted to.
Barcelona, Spain. Photo by Dennis van den Worm
Be Flexible With Dates
Every travel blogger out there tells you to play with dates. You probably already knew that. Yes, Captain Obvious is closer than we think sometimes. They also suggest you consider the shoulder season. For example, we have talked about taking a trip to Barcelona for a while now, but the one thing we have not done is travel to Europe in the winter. Interestingly, early December has incredible fares, and there is still that nonstop flight from LAX to Barcelona. We thought about Christmas, but Christmas can cost more, wherever you travel. By making small tweaks with dates and booking in the shoulder season, you can save yourself a significant amount of money. I also have no desire whatsoever to battle massive waves of people. Summers in Montrose are plenty warm, so going somewhere warmer is not really that attractive to me anyway. But checking out Europe during different times of the year is intriguing. These small shifts can dramatically change pricing and routing, offering you a better way to experience your trip while allowing you to stick to your budget.
Andalusia in April. Photo by Wendy Stieg
Design the Trip Instead of Accepting the Itinerary
I am going to use the grocery store analogy here, so bear with me. Have you ever considered why you find yourself buying things that weren't on your list while at the grocery store? That's because a lot of thought has gone into how people shop. None of it is accidental. Grocery stores are designed to influence what ends up in your cart. Health experts often tell us to shop the perimeter, where fresh food tends to be, while the middle aisles are packed with products competing for our attention and our dollars. Travel planning isn't all that different. Booking engines are designed to sell transportation. They are very good at solving the problem of getting you from Point A to Point B. What they are not designed to do is create the best possible trip for you. If you decide to design your own trip instead of simply accepting the itinerary you are shown, you stand a much better chance of creating a trip that actually fits your goals, budget, and travel style. Don't just accept the itinerary. Question all of it. Don't automatically bundle everything together either. Start with your budget and work backward. Think about routes. Think about gateway airports. Think about travel time. Know that the booking engine is not planning your vacation. You are. This will end up saving you more than just money. It will save you time and sanity too.
One tool I created for myself is the Best of Both Worlds Air Planner It helps me compare routes, track costs, organize flight details, and evaluate the trip as a whole rather than focusing on airfare alone.
The Best of Both Worlds Air Planner. Created by Wendy Stieg
Your Time Has Value Too
It’s possible to be so focused on price that you forget how important your time is. Time is, in fact, a part of the travel budget. PTO and vacation days are limited, and the time of year when you can actually take time off work can vary depending on what you do for a living. That means extra travel days come at a cost. Extra driving is not free. Think about how far the airport is from where you actually need to be and factor in total travel time. You can successfully plan stopovers to your benefit, but airport hotels and overnight layovers add up. If your itinerary creates more exhaustion than necessary, that’s a cost too. Saving money and saving time are not always the same thing. This is where the numbers on a screen stop being the whole story. We are planning to go to Missoula for music in July. We want to spend time with friends, see music, and enjoy Missoula for a couple of days. That means we don’t have a lot of extra time to drive. One friend of ours was smart and also able to book a flight from California to Bozeman instead of Missoula because the airfare is considerably less. I found that option too, but he will be there for over a week and we will be there for three nights. This is a great example of not being able to book early. We have to accept the airfares we find now. We did spend considerably more than our friend on airfare, but we will be able to see friends, enjoy some music, and avoid an extra six hours of driving, which is what Bozeman would entail for us. Our goal is to spend more time at our destination and less time getting there.
Of course, airfare isn't the only thing that can create friction while traveling. I wrote a lighter take on that subject in How to Travel Without Killing Your Partner.
Paul, Wendy, and Brent at Goose, Kettlehouse, MT.
How to Play the Airlines' Game and Win
The airlines set the fares. You decide how to respond to them. Do your best to plan ahead, save your money, and understand that sometimes you will have to trade money for convenience. Sometimes you will spend more because it buys you a better routing, fewer travel days, less stress, or more time doing what you actually traveled to do.
The goal isn't to find the cheapest flight. The goal is to find the best flight for your trip.
