Fly Cheaper - Part II

Cntd...

Flying Cheaper not always depends on just selecting a right airline offering a cheaper fare. Its way beyond that. There are a few ingredients that can help you get the fare or atleast understand why your fare ends up being slightly higher. Its better to take a right decision before booking the tickets by considering these lists of important ingredients:

1. Season - Low & High Season or Peak & Off-Peak Season
2. Visiting Place
3. Different Routes
4. Understanding Seat Structure of the Plane
5. Booking Tickets

Season

In a year, we have 2 seasons which can be either called as high and low season or Peak or Off-peak season. The high and low season mainly vary depending on the destination location and number of flights available to reach the location. For example, from USA to Chennai Feb, Mar, Apr,Sept,Oct months are low season. May, Jun, July, Aug, Nov, Dec & Jan months are Peak/High season.

Visiting Place

Destination place also decides how big the air fare you need to pay. If you are travelling to Chennai from NY, NJ, Chicago & SF which has only few flights flying in and out by different airlines, you can expect a high air fare in the high season too. But if you travel to Delhi from these places, you have lots of flights flying in and out and can the fare is really reasonable.

Different Routes

En-Routing of the airlines also makes difference in the airfare. If you are ok having 2 or more stopping, you can expect a cheaper fare. But if you want to have only one stop during the high season, better ready to pay a high fare. For example, if you want to fly to Chennai from Houston during July / Aug high season times, you might end up paying $1700 per person thru Lufthansa one stop in Frankfurt. But if you decide to fly via Delta or Air India, stopping Chicago, London, Mumbai & finally to chennai, the air fare might come out cheaper.

Understanding Seat Structure

For instance, if a plane has 300 coach seats the seats are divided as so. This is an approximation. 150 seats sell for full fare

100 seats sell for a lower fare

50 seats sell for the absolute lowest fare

Booking Tickets

Once you are ready with your dates, you have to find a good agent to book your tickets. There are 2 sources as per my knowledge from whom you can buy tickets other than the airline.

1. Consolidators & 2. Agents

Consolidators are like a big agency which sells tickets in bulk from the lot alloted to them by the airlines for a wholesale price without any added commisions.

Agents are sub agencies which sell tickets or try to get tickets from the alloted tickets by the consolidators adding commisions

If you can find a consolidator near you, buy tickets from them not from the agent. You will save quite a lot of money.

How to get the absolute lowest fares

In conclusion,

• Try to go on dates which doesn't fall under too high season
• Plan in advance **2-3 months for low season. **4-5 months for high season
  Avoid flying on weekends (for some airlines)
• Be flexible about dates of travel. Some dates get filled up but the next day may be available.
• Check different options of flying out like flight options, enrouting options
• Call different agency and consolidators to get price for the same dates and compare them

None of the above guarantees the lowest fare but this will improve your chances immensely.

Fly Cheaper - Part I

Fly Cheap to anywhere around the world !! That's the airline mantra you hear it all over recent days. You might think that you would find a good cheap price whenever you want to go, but that's not case. There is always a hook to all the cheap and free stuff. Nothing comes cheap !?!

Let me take you back to the year 1998, when I first boarded my first flight ever to fly out of India. I took the Lufthansa flight from Chennai to Boston via Frankfurt. I still can remember the way I felt uneasy and don't know exactly how to handle the travel. I was sitting way back in a big flight with 250 passengers. I never couldn't imagine that that flight can carry these may people. Nobody can tell from looking it outside.

I was travelling to Boston as a Business trip. All expenses paid by the company. I didn't even bothered to find out how much was the flight ticket. I was just happy and lucky to go to US beating others in the list. I travelled again in 1999 for the long term assignment, in the same airline. This time too, I didn't know the price of the air ticket. But I guessed it might be around $1500 for a round trip. I really got to know the price, when I had to come back for a visit in 2001. I paid around $2000 for a round trip during the Christmas time. I book it almost 3 months ahead and still got this heavy rate. So I ended up doing a research on my next trip on how to get cheaper tickets and I would like to share it.

Will continue...

Calling India gets cheaper and cheaper...

You keep hearing from somebody or other that "World is shrinking" or "World is getting small". It is used in different contexts like Internet helped to connect to people easily from one end to other using webcam, chats. It is also used to express that we can go from one end of the world to other in 24 hours which is not possible way back.

But I like to use the context to express a true fact that Calling India from US got way cheaper and easier than ever and made the world smaller. Its just 0.08 cents now comparing to .75-.80cents 7 or 8 years ago. We have lots of different providers to pick now instead of coutable numbers at that time.

Its either AT&T or MCI which offered international calling. You have to take long distance options to get the international calling. Its was .65 cents when I started using it. Its slowly gone down to .30 cents in AT&T. We did have calling cards at that time for one time use with more mins but ripped off money as surcharges. At this time, Vonage came to market and they offered .10 cents with their international plan. Then they hiked up their price to .17cents as current rate.

Seeing the market and all the competition, Reliance took the advantage introducing the calling card with clear calls for 12.9 cents.. We been using it for the past 1 years since Vonage hiked up the price. Then I came to know UnionTelecard offered by IDT service with calling cards like Bharatmatha for 7.9 cents. We started using it. Only disadvantage being, you have to change different call if you want to only recharge for $5 since they don't have $5 recharge option.

Now recently Airtel jump started and kicked off his calling card competing with Reliance. Airtel is offering 7.9 cents comparing to 12.9cents by Relianceindiacall. You can sign up now to get a double talk time on the signup and first recharge. Go to www.airtelcallhome.com and signup to get a cheaper rate with clear cals.

I just started using Airtel for the few days. Call are clear and good. Lets see how it goes..

Enjoy cheap calling and keep in touch with your loved ones ?!?!