Posted by Seth on June 9, 2009 under Uncategorized | 
Cheap flights to Europe over the winter months are pretty typical, but they usually don’t go on sale until much later in the summer/fall season once the carriers know that folks aren’t going to pay full price. Delta has decided that they can’t afford to wait that long and have launched a pretty aggressive sale to most of their European destinations for ~$230 round-trip from New York City. That is typical of the bargain pricing that shows up in this market and having them available now is a good time to lock in a deal on a New Year’s celebration destination.
For us the destination will be Barcelona. We’ve got the long weekend booked for flights. Woohoo! Oh, and we’re the only assigned seats on the flight so that would probably explain why Delta is starting to panic a bit on future bookings and dropped the price so early in the season.
A quick update on this: The sale is actually valid starting in late August for at least some of the cities. So for folks looking to go while it is still warm there are plenty of options there, too!
Posted by Seth on May 20, 2009 under Uncategorized |
Want to get a LOT of points for not much money? It is super easy thanks to the myriad of promos tied to loyalty credit cards. Offers of 25,000 points or more just to sign up are rather common, as are waivers on the annual fees for the first year. So why wouldn’t everyone just sign up for a bunch of cards and rake in the points? Well, actually, lots of folks do. But could that game be coming to a rather abrupt end in the near future?
The US Congress has passed legislation recently – expected to be reconciled and signed into law by the holiday weekend – that will greatly change the way the credit card issuers are able to charge fees and change interest rates on accounts. This has many in the point-obsessed community up in arms, afraid that their gravy train may have finally dried up. Why? Because the companies are paying for the huge bonuses out of the money they are pulling in from the high fees they are charging the folks carrying a balance.
In many cases the people getting the points from the promos are never coming anywhere close to actually generating enough revenue – through annual fees, merchant processing fees on charges or any other means – to account for the bonuses being allotted. In some cases the spread is $100 or more. But the credit card companies continue to offer these programs so they must be profitable at some level, right? That profit comes from folks who carry a balance on their loyalty cards, often at a ridiculously high rate. But if Congress regulates those rates then where will the profit margin come from? And if no profits, can the programs continue to be offered? Certainly legislating against stupidity is a losing battle and probably one that no government should really be involved in, but it seems that it might actually be useful in this particular instance, at least from a macroeconomic perspective.
The math is really quite simple on these changes – when the profits disappear so will the perks. The question is whether folks churning the cards will still be able to collect or not, and I really do not have too much sympathy for them if that avenue disappears.
Posted by Seth on May 19, 2009 under Uncategorized |
Who says you need to book way in advance to get the best rates? That certainly doesn’t seem to be the case these days for many destinations. Advance bookings are down across the industry in many areas and deals abound for those willing to search them out.
Most notably for me was a hotel booking I made on Saturday for an arrival this Friday. Only 6 days in advance and there were plenty of rooms available, all at ~20% off the web rates. A quick call to the hotel was able to secure that deal. It works better with non-chain properties so there is that, but I’m quite happy saving a few hundred dollars that way and giving up the points.
Book a refundable reservation farther out if there is concern about missing out completely, but check up closer to the arrival date. Odds are there are deals to be found with the industry the way it is right now.
Posted by Seth on January 27, 2009 under Uncategorized |
It looks like the previously predicted drop in air travel is finally starting to actually show up in the booking systems. And some of the airlines are reacting by getting more aggressive with their weekend fare specials in an effort to put some bodies in the seats and a couple extra bucks in the airlines’ coffers.
I actually thought it might have been a mistake last weekend when I saw some of them – transcon round trips for $140 are rather rare, even for the weekend specials – but it seems that the deals are going to be around for a while. In reality, it seems that the $140 transcon deal was a mistake – American Airlines has theirs up around $210+ for next weekend and Continental is up to $248+ this weekend. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t still deals to be found.
This weekend Continental has specials to a number of Caribbean/Mexican destinations at some great prices, at least from Newark or Houston. For me, it means a random last-minute trip to plan to Trinidad. The trip is full of great abbreviations. The airport code is POS, and the country is often abbreviated as TnT. And that’s where the dynamite reference comes in. And then it is a short jump to the alternate spelling.
Anyways, look for some photos and tales from a completely random trip to Trinidad coming up later this weekend. Oh, and I already have been upgraded for the outbound flight thanks to my elite status. 
Posted by Seth on April 18, 2008 under Uncategorized |
JetBlue, in conjunction with Dunkin Donuts, is offering triple TrueBlue points for May and early June. The promo requires seats to be purchased by May 6 and flown between May 1 and June 15. Triple points only for the first customer listed on the reservation, so if you’re flying as a group book as separate reservations, not all on one. The “triple” is really only 1.5x, since you already get double every time you book online, but this is still a nice little bonus that they’re throwing out there. Also, this one explicitly states that it can be redeemed multiple times, so fly as much as you want to get the extra points. You have to book through the special link to get the deal, so plan accordingly.
Good stuff!
Posted by Seth on April 7, 2008 under Uncategorized |
This is a slightly convoluted one to make happen, but the price is pretty good considering. JetBlue has a couple promotions going on right now that can be combined to get a very cheap TrueBlue reward ticket. And considering that the availability for TrueBlue rewards is generally pretty good, and that they can be used anywhere in the JetBlue route network (including Aruba and St. Martin) getting a free one cheap is nothing to sneer at. So here’s how it works…
There is a promo running right now that gets you 50 TrueBlue points and $50 off your first ticket purchase when you sign up for the JetBlue AmEx card. There is also a promo going on that lets you get 50 TrueBlue points and $25 off for every round trip ticket that is booked between now and May 13, and flown between May 1 and June 18. Combining those you get $75 off your first ticket and 100 TrueBlue points, enough for a reward ticket. Plus, JetBlue just announced their Spring Sale, with fares as low as $64 each way from JFK to a few cities, including Syracuse, Burlington, Rochester, Buffalo and Portland, ME. With all the taxes and whatnot that comes out to be $150 r/t, which drops to $75 when the discounts are applied. And the trip can be done in a quick few hours one day, as the flights are all pretty short, or you can extend it and spend a day or two in one of those cities.
If you don’t want the AmEx card or if you already have one you miss the 50 bonus points and you miss the extra $50 discount. That means you have to fly the trip twice to get the 100 bonus points, and you only get the $25 off the ticket price. That makes the deal about $125 for each of the two trips you need to take, or $250 for the “free” ticket. At that price it isn’t quite as good a deal unless you also want to visit one of the sale cities, but considering that cheap flights are evaporating about as quickly as airlines seem to be, this isn’t a terrible deal. Also being discussed here, for more details and nuance.
Posted by Seth on March 31, 2008 under Uncategorized |
Part of the fun for me is just the joy of travel. I like sitting on an airplane (even in coach!) or on a train or in a car or bus, just for the sake of travel. But in addition to that, there is something to be said for getting the better of the “man” and taking advantage of the opportunities that the travel industry offers when they make mistakes.
Not every cheap deal is a mistake. Indeed, $200 transcontinental routings still exist, though they are much less common these days, and the carriers seem to want you to book them. Every now and then, however, a fare comes along that is the result of a data entry issue. Maybe the fare is supposed to be CDN$3900 and it gets loaded as CDN$39.00. Maybe the fare was supposed to be $5531 each way and it gets loaded as $531 each way. Or maybe the fare was supposed to be $171 r/t and it gets loaded as $71 r/t or a $1200 fare that was $120. In some cases the fare actually gets loaded as $0 plus tax, though such instances are incredibly rare. I’ve booked a couple of these deals (the first two and the last one noted above) and had some great vacations as a result. It wasn’t that I necessarily knew that I wanted to go to Cyprus or New Zealand the past two New Years, but that’s where the airlines seemed to suggest that I go; I just bought the tickets they offer and figured out the details later. There’s a whole subculture dedicated to these fares on FlyerTalk, and a few of the folks there take it more seriously than others.
One of the more serious players is the FrugalTravelGuy. He manages to keep track of a dozen or so airlines and the various deals that are always swirling about. And he was featured in his local paper this past weekend. I’m not sure if it was to identify him as a member of the crazy travel obsessed clan or something else, but it is a pretty decent article. Anyways, click the link above and check out his collection of posts; there are some good ones there worth checking out.
Posted by Seth on March 6, 2008 under Uncategorized |
Every now and then an airline will show up in a competitor’s hub market with a cheaper than normal fare. There doesn’t often seem to be rhyme or reason for why it happens, but it does. On top of that, sometimes the carrier being “attacked” will respond in kind. So US Air may offer a fare from Cleveland, Houston and Newark and then wait to see if Continental bothers to respond.
In this case, more than just Continental seems to have responded. At this point in time almost every major carrier has sale flights to Hawaii from a number of origination points on the mainland. The cheapest one I’m seeing is $351 from Charlotte on Delta, American, Northwest and United. Fares from Newark are $432, and the other NYC airports are a reasonable $452. Not nearly as good as the $120 r/t fare we got a couple years back, but a pretty reasonable sale nonetheless. And considering that all the majors are running it, collecting miles on your carrier of choice should be no problem. Availability may be harder than not to find, but a bit of digging should work.
Happy trails!
