6 Unique and funky ways to save on airline tickets, with or without points.
I’m pretty sure you haven’t seen these tips all over your instagram, yet.
We’ve all been told to book flights on Tuesdays or use incognito browsers so airlines can’t track our cookies. Those are largely myths and we don’t have much evidence they are a thing outside of some lucky breaks.
I’d rather focus my energy on tangible savings.
…and no I’m not going to write about ‘skip lagging’. Here are some downright funky ways I’ve found to actually save money on flights.
Buying points
I know the urge to skim articles may have you thinking you can move on, but please read! This is not always going to be a money saving strategy.
When does buying points make sense?
When it’s cheaper than the cash price, of course! Not every sale is made equal. Sign up for emails from every airline you can think of, and all of the ones that appear on searches to destinations you want to go. They will notify you of points sales.
Some notable sales that actually make a difference:
Air France 100% bonus
Air Canada 50% bonus or better
Alaska Air 60% bonus
Finding the sweet spots for buying points is difficult because it requires an understanding of how to do a point search, finding a good points price and then matching that with a good point buying bonus. If you want to practice start by looking up point buying prices on airlines you already know like AA or United. The fares that stand out should be ones that are low (either they say Saver next to them or are 10-12k for domestic/Caribbean economy) paired with a high cash price. A great example was this one from AA:
It was 9.5k points but $499.
The cost to buy the points for this flight is $338.
Here is a business class example of value you can get when buying points from Alaska:
This flight is worth 55,000 points or $1,912. The cost to buy the miles is $1,512 and often better when they offer a points sale. The big value will come from international airlines that are known for rock bottom point pricing on long haul flights. Air France is one of my favorites.
2. Partial point/cash bookings.
This one is a DOOZY. You can get some ridiculous savings off fares, but it’s a pretty advanced technique. British Airways and Iberia are notorious for giving you a chart that outlines the price if you want to use just some points and supplement the rest with cash.
Because they have a cap for how high the base cash price can be, often the lowest point option saves you hundreds of dollars. In this example it would save you $2,565. Yes, you read that right. The value of your points in this case would be 18 cents per point.
I was desperate to find a flight to St. Kitts for a holiday weekend (ouch). AA, who is a One World partner like British Airways and Iberia, is one of the only airlines to fly that route. They were charging a whopping $1000 round trip from Miami. Yikes.
Iberia was selling the flight for 4,400 points and $125 each way. Ummm, yes please. Even if you don’t have points that transfer to Iberia, the cost of buying 5,000 points (you have to round up) is way less than $400.
When looking for business class flights the savings can be in the thousands.
3. Unlock the budget airlines.
Love ‘em or hate ‘em, budget airlines provide a massive savings for those who pack light (I could do a whole article on the benefits of not checking bags). Many regions have budget airlines you’ve never heard of, with dirt cheap fares to the city you need to get to. You can ‘unlock’ these regional carriers by flying to a hub instead of all the way to your final destination. For instance, I helped a client get to Mazatlan, Mexico for the total eclipse. The airlines were gouging the prices on those routes so terribly, it was going to cost over $2000 round trip (each!) to get there. However, flying to Mexico City was $700ish and a budget airline, VivaAeroBus was charging $300 round trip from MEX to MZT. Of course that’s still outrageous for them, but it shaved $1,000 off the trip, per person.
How do you find these budget airlines? You can use a site like flightconnections.com to view all airlines that fly out of your destination airport, and then look up the largest hubs nearby.
Things to note: Give yourself at least three hours for a layover when booking on different tickets. Use a card that has trip insurance or buy an insurance plan. Staying overnight in the hub city is also a great plan if you can swing it.
4. Finding those airlines you’ve never heard of.
Most of us know Southwest isn’t searchable on google, how many other airlines are we missing?
Have you heard of French Bee?
If you search Tahiti to LAX you won’t see them in a search, but they sell a premium economy seat as low as $650 each way from this hard to get to destination. They only fly to San Francisco from Tahiti so if you aren’t searching there you won’t see them. They also only fly 2 days a week, so there’s a large likelihood they won’t show up in a google search at all.
They do fly to Paris, but to Orly, instead of CDG. They are easy to miss.
Zip Air is another good one. They fly to Japan for around $1,100 in business class (one way). This is where flightconnections.com comes in handy. Look at your destination and look at ALL the airlines that fly from there. Is there a nearby city you can get to that could unlock that airline for you? Does it run on certain days or times of year? Your search isn’t complete if you aren’t looking for every possible airline that flies to your destination.
A huge mistake many Americans make is only looking at AA, United and Delta for their flights.
5. Airline Chicken
Ah, my favorite game.
Most airlines have a rule in place that if they adjust your scheduled departure time by a certain amount of minutes (sometimes 30, sometimes an hour) you can change your flight for free to any other flight that day. Sometimes you can choose a nearby city or even a different day.
This means you can book a horrendous 5am-10-hour-layover-2-stop-hot-mess itinerary and if they change any of those legs, switch to the non stop itinerary without paying an increase in fare.
For those article skimmers, please pause, this is important!
Airline Chicken is a gamble.
If your flight never changes times you will be stuck on your booked itinerary so make sure you’re mentally prepared for that flight.
There was a period of time where Southwest was reliably re-evaluating their schedule every month and changed essentially every flight. That is when airline chicken really took off. They don’t do this anymore. Now about 1 out of every 4 Southwest flights of mine get moved. But hey, those are better odds than video poker (I did not fact check this stat).
This works best with economy fares since business space is more limited and the chance of a business seat being available on your new flight is another gamble.
Domestic airlines with no change fees are good for this, because if you lose the game of chicken you can pay the fare increase and change your flight without a change fee. Ya know, if you aren’t prepared for a 2 stop, 10 hour layover.
6. Crafting your own layovers
Unless you live in a big city, most of your flights over 3 hours, or out of the country are going to involve a stop. Sometimes that stop is saving you money and many times it’s not. If I understood how airlines priced their flights I could probably be rich, but alas it’s a mystery. What I do know is that sometimes when I break that exact flight down into two segments it may open up cheaper award space on a single leg, or a cheaper fare class that wasn’t available when I looked at the entire Itinerary. Southwest is famous for this. They may block off ‘wanna getaway’ fares for your trip, but not both legs if you search them separate. AA may charge 9,000 points from Miami to Jamaica but 35,000 from Nashville to Miami to Jamaica. Whyyyy?
Book those legs separately, pray nothing is delayed (yolo!) and save some dough!
Now go out there and get funky with your next booking!
-Stephanie
