Cheap flights are waiting for you!
They’re out there. The cheapest seats on that flight you’re eyeing. And they can be yours. Yours! Mwahhahahahaha (that’s the evil scientist laugh of victory).
Provided you book early, that is.
And by booking early, I don’t mean at 8:30 in the morning, I mean 3-6 months prior to departure. Seriously. Those last-minute deals you remember your Uncle Buddy getting in 1989 have gone the way of the dinosaurs (with the exception of charters, but I’ll get into that later), and now if you don’t act fast, the price of your flight will continue to go up with each passing minute. Essentially, all economy-class seats on major scheduled airlines (like Air Canada, British Airways, Cathay Pacific, etc.) are identical, but price-wise they’re divided into anywhere from 5-20 different price ranges, with a limited number of seats at each range. The earlier you book, the higher your chances of snagging one of the cheaper seats before they all sell out and you have to move up to the next lowest option. This is also why last-minute tickets are usually the most expensive, as all the cheap seats have sold out and you have to suck it up and take whatever’s last. No one wants to do that. Unless, of course, you have gobs of money just sitting around in your Scrooge McDuck cash tower, and don’t care if you waste a few extra hundred. But in that case, what the hell are you doing flying coach? I can hook you up with all the cushiness of business class…
Oh, and killer seat sales? I really wouldn’t bet on it. Every day another airline’s in the news as it struggles to stay out of bankruptcy, so giving away all their profits is not likely to happen any time soon.
As I mentioned earlier, the exception to this rule is charter airlines. They don’t fly nearly as frequently on limited routes, so having empty seats hits them harder financially as the larger carriers. This is where we find the CAD$50.00 one way flights to London (not counting the CAD$275.00 tax, of course) and the awesome week at a Cancun all-inclusive resort for CAD$750.00 plus tax package deals. Price-wise, charters are a great deal. And with a lot of the smaller, unreputable charter companies not surviving the recession, the ones that remain are the ones with good service, good reputations and better financial footing, so they’re much less likely to go under between the time you’ve purchased your ticket and actually get to travel. The flipside is that they don’t fly daily, so you need to be a bit flexible with your dates, your luggage limit is much lower (those gianttubs of gummi bears you want to bring home for each of the grandkids? Perfect, as long as you have no clothes or other souvenirs that might push you past the free luggage allowance. Over that, you’re paying crazy high fees per extra kilo – please see Scrooge McDuck note above. This is a true story, too. The passenger had to load all her gummi bears into a cardboard box, cover it in duct tape and pay extra to get them home from Frankfurt) and you’re more likely to have big screens instead of seatback TVs on your long-haul. For the amount you’re saving, it can be a very even trade.
But for those of us who can only take certain days off and/or really want those 12kg worth of gummi bears (umm, this is making me hungry, I should have used an example I didn’t like), the only way to guarantee you’re not paying hundreds more than the guy next to you reading the in-flight magazine over your shoulder is to book early. Think of it this way, the earlier you book, the more time you get to just chill and plan what you’re going to do on your vacation. Or pay off that Visa bill.
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