I am often surprised to find out how much people pay for their air travel. Unless this was a sudden last-minute trip, I don’t see why someone would pay such exorbitant amount to fly to a destination. Since I am a type-A person, I start looking for my flight deals very early on so I don’t have to burn a hole in my pocket. Here are some of the basic stuff related to air travel that I think everyone should be aware of:

Google Flights

This has to be my favorite tool to search for flights. If you have a destination in mind, you can enter it and see for the next 12 months what the prices look like. It also allows you to filter them by stops, fare type, baggage allowance, airlines, airports and times. But the most amazing feature of this tool is the “Explore” option. Here you can enter your departing airport and dates, and it will show you a map of all the places with the prices. Another option is to select a region and select month and duration of the trip and it will you tell the best fares and dates for your trip. Once I started using Google flights, I have not used any other search engines for booking air travels.

Hopper

It’s an app that uses data analytics to predict if you should buy a flight right now or you should wait for a better deal. It uses historical data to come up with these predictions. You can always see what a good deal vs really expensive option for any round trip or one-way trip you are making. Almost all the time, I found a better deal by just watching my flights. Keep in mind that Hopper doesn’t have data from all the airlines so sometimes depending on your route you might not see the best deal on Hopper.

Mistake Fares

A lot of times airlines end up posting fares by mistakes that are way cheaper than the usual for the route. Usually, airlines end up honoring these fares but they are not obligated to. There are many websites that send you an email or other notification when they see any exception deal that is too good to be true. Once such service is Scott’s Cheap Flights.

24 Hour cancellation Window 

Almost all airlines in the US will let you book a flight and cancel it for free within the 24 hours of booking the flights even if you bought a ticket that is non-refundable. So, whenever you see a fare that looks like a great deal, I would always recommend to book and then cancel it within 24 hours of booking if you don’t want to make that trip.

Budget carrier vs Full Service Carrier

These days you will find budget carriers on not just domestic sectors but international routes too. These carriers will charge you for a fare that just includes the cost of getting you from point A to B. Any and everything including bags (carry on and checked in), boarding, seat selections, and meals will be available for an extra fee. I am not a big fan of these carriers since I always travel with at least carry-on luggage and want certain facilities like seat selection for my flights. The other (and in my opinion, major) drawback of flying these carriers is in the scenarios when your flight gets cancelled. Since most of these carriers fly just a few times in a week, if your flight gets cancelled they might put you on the next flight which might not be until a few days later ruining your travel plans. Full service carriers are better in terms of handling cancellations since they have a lot more flights and can connect you via their different hubs or in the worst case scenarios put you on another airline’s flight.

Just a word of caution: In order to match the ridiculously low prices of the budget carriers, full service carriers have introduced a fare called “Basic Economy” which essentially is a no-frill economy and you end up paying extra for every single facility like bags, seat selection, boarding, etc.

Layovers, Stopovers and Open Jaws

These 3 words have a totally different meaning in the air travel domain:

Layover is a stop of less than 24 hours internationally (and 4 hours on domestic travels) between your departure city and destination city. For e.g.: You are flying from A to B via C and you stop in C is for less than 24 hours. Depending on what your immigration and visa status is you are able to leave the airport and come back before you next flight. The checked bags are sent all the way to your final destinations though.

Stopover is a stop of more than 24 hours between your departure city and destination. You can book this using the multi-city option on the flight search portals. For e.g.: If you are flying from New York to Paris, you can fly New York to London to spend a few days there and then fly from London to Paris and your return will be from Paris to New York. This is a great way to see a city/country if you want to squeeze something for a couple of days. Note that the stopover place had to be in the direction of your final destination.

Open Jaws essentially are 2 one-way trips considered to be a round trip since the origin and final destination is the same. For eg: You can go from A to B and then fly back from C to A. The travel from B to C is “open jaw”.

A lot of frequent flyers will let you add a combination of above when you try to book award travel so it is a great way of adding more cities to your holiday itinerary.

Frequent Flyer Programs

Please, please, please, enroll yourself into airline’s frequent flyer program and use that number every time you travel. Almost all your flights are eligible to collect some miles that can be used for future award travel. A lot of these programs will even give you miles for dining and shopping. These days there are plenty of ways to earn miles apart from just flying.

It is important to identify if your home airport is a hub for any airline. If so, chances are you would end up flying that airline more often. Case in point, Atlanta airport for Delta airlines. It would make sense to stick to this airline and collect miles so you can reach your award travel quickly.

Also, note that a lot of airlines are a part of 3 major alliance: SkyTeam, Start Alliance and OneWorld. What essentially this means for you is that you don’t need to create a frequent flyer for every single airline you fly. It is okay to create one for airlines within each alliance and you can collect miles for any travel on the alliance partners. Apart from the alliance partners, every airline has other partner airlines that can award you miles for your flight on those airlines. It would take a minute or two to look up the airline you are flying to see if you can earn miles in the frequent flyer program you are part of.

Frequent flyer programs are not just a way to collect miles for award travel but to also get added benefits you fly every time. Some of these added benefits are lounge access, complimentary upgrades, extra baggage allowance, priority security, boarding and baggage handling.

This is a very complicated topic and I can go on and on about this forever. But the idea is for you to spend some time reading the details of your chosen frequent flyer program and then find out how you can max it out for your use case.

Award Travel vs Paid Travel, Upgrades with Miles  

You get the best value for the accrued miles when you redeem them for an international flight and in a premium cabin. However, depending on situation, you might have to redeem them on an economy travel. Please make sure to check how much a cash ticket would cost and the award travel and see if it makes sense to redeem them for travel. Also, keep in mind, you still have to pay taxes on the award flights and these can be too much for flights originating out of Europe.

Paying with the right credit card

Just like the frequent flyer miles, credit cards have their own loyalty program that will yield you some points for every transaction made. Some of these cards offer 2x, 3x or even 5x time points for purchases in travel. So, it is important to use the right credit card for purchase you make. You can always use these points to redeem for any travel in the future.

Some of the popular rewards program like Amex, Chase, Citi or SPG would let you transfer points to airlines’ frequent flyer miles.

Usually the card with no annual fees are not the best for getting great deals and values out of the rewards program. Depending on how much you spend on travel and other spending habits, it might make more sense to get a mid-tier to a premium travel credit card. A lot of these premium cards come with great travel perks like lounge access, travel rebate and credit for TSA Pre-check/Global Entry.

Again, this is a very complicated topic and can go on forever with all the details. Essentially, you should take a look at your spending habits and check which cards would give you the best value for travel awards.