Tools of the Trade: Things that Will Help You Travel for Less

The last couple of weeks has seen some amazing fare “sales” that are so good, some people might call them mistakes. Round Trip Cathay Pacific first class for ~$800, round trip business class from the US to Australia for ~$1.5K, and more.

Sometimes when I see these deals I post about them on my personal Facebook page to let friends know. There have probably been a hundred people or more over the years that have said to me “hey man, next time you see a deal like that, let me know about it.” It’s simply not practical to send that many messages to that many people, and that’s a main reason why this blog even started out in the first place. Today, social media is the easiest way to communicate that type of news (my friends don’t even follow this blog…sad!).

After another round of “man, why didn’t you tell me about those deals???” from friends this past week, I figure it’s time to teach a few people how to fish rather than continuing to give them that fish. Or something like that. In this post I’ll detail some ways you can keep up-to-date about deals and how to find some other information that will be useful to you in the future.

Note: Twitter will be extremely useful for all of this.

How to Learn About Mistake Fares, Hotel Mispricing, and Other Deals

On rare occasions, like the Cathay Pacific fare last week, airlines or hotels make mistakes. They’re sometimes called mistake fares, fat-finger fares, or simply misprices.

Common airfare mistakes happen because an airline/employee “forgets” to include a zero at the end of the fare (i.e. $1,000 instead of $10,000), they forget to add fuel surcharges to the airfare or those fuel surcharges drop off for other reasons too complicated to explain here, or they use a fare basis for premium economy as Business Class. Each of these would result in a fare much cheaper than normal.

So how do you find them? Of course bloggers always post these deals on their blog, but they’re often late to the deal, sometimes hilariously so (like TPG). You want to go to the source. More often than not, the source is just some dude that was searching for something and found it extra cheap, then decided to post it on Flyertalk. From there it filters out to the usual suspects, like deal websites and blogs. You’ll also see good stuff on The Flight Deal (mostly economy but some premium cabins) and Secret Flying (though I find they steal deals rather than come up with original content).

So how do you ensure you’ll be notified of these deals immediately, without needing me to send you a personalized text message? Twitter, of course. It’s the fastest way to spread information, and it works beautifully for our hobby.

First, you’ll want to follow @premiumfares. I don’t know who it is, and I don’t care (honestly, it might just be a bot someone set up). But shortly after someone posts a deal on the Flyertalk Premium Fare Deals forum, the link gets tweeted out.

Second, follow @theflightdeal.

Third, you’re going to want to click “Turn on Mobile Notifications” for each of those accounts. As long as you have the Twitter mobile app on your phone and are logged in, you’ll get notifications about everything they tweet. That means you’ll be one of the first to know.

When it comes time to book, one of the best resources today for finding good itineraries is Google Flights. A more complicated website that you can use for searching but not booking is ITA Matrix. I would say only advanced users should use ITA these days.

Hotels are different and a bit harder to find. It seems they’re less prone to error, and it’s hard to find crazy sales like you might find on airfares as a result. That also means there are fewer resources to find mistakes when they happen.

Again, Flyertalk is a good bet on this one. There’s a thread called Hotel Deals that is devoted to mistakes and other sales. Las Vegas even has its own dedicated thread there. I don’t know if there’s a twitter account for the Hotel Deals forum on Flyertalk, but one resource on twitter is Extreme Hotel Deals, which often lists deals that appear on Flyertalk. Go ahead and set up notifications for that one too.

Hotel deals are largely more miss than hit – I don’t know many people that travel because of a good hotel rate. On the other hand, many people will happily fly to and explore a new destination for cheap on a mistake fare.

How to Find Flight Award Costs & Airline Routes

This one is a bit more complicated because of the number of airlines, alliances, and websites involved. I’ll provide a basic rundown that will help most people.

Most people here have a certain amount of miles and points saved up. That’s half the battle. The other, and in my opinion the harder, half is finding and booking the award you want. If you’re a beginner, you have to realize that flexibility is the absolute biggest key. I know you want to go to Hawaii over Thanksgiving weekend, but so do about a hundred thousand other frequent flyers. Patience and flexibility are key.

Once you know what type of miles and points you have, you need to figure out where you want to go. Pick somewhere, and learn what airport you need to get to. Let’s say you want to go to Seoul, Korea because you hear they have the best skin lightening products in the world. Great! The main airport in Seoul is ICN.

I think the best thing to do next is to go to Wikipedia. Is there any more useful site than Wikipedia? Sure, it’s not always 100% accurate, but I don’t recall it ever failing me either. Each airport’s Wikipedia page has a section called “Airlines and Destinations” in it, and it’s a great resource. You can’t fly to an airport or know what miles can get you there unless you know what airlines actually fly there.

I usually just google “ICN airport” and it’s usually one of the first couple of links. Then click on Airlines and Destinations in the “Contents” menu and you’ll have a complete list of every airline that flies there and what city they fly from.

Let’s say you were such a big fan of Crazy Rich Asians that you decided to hoard a stash of Singapore Airlines miles. That’s a weird reason to collect miles, but somehow you made a decent choice anyway. Here’s where it will become complicated – Singapore Airlines miles can be used on that airline of course, but also on partner airlines. Singapore Air is a part of the Star Alliance, so it’s a good idea to know what airlines are part of that alliance.

The important/major ones to know are Star Alliance, Oneworld, and Skyteam. Aside from these, there are also bilateral partnerships like that between American Airlines and Etihad. Etihad isn’t part of an alliance, but they made a separate agreement with AA to allow each airline’s frequent flyers to book awards on the other. AA and Qatar Airways is another example, and there are plenty others (like much of Alaska Airlines’ partners).

Great, now you know what Star Alliance airlines fly from where you are to ICN in Korea. Now you need to know how much it will cost you to get there in your preferred cabin of travel. My favorite resource for that is the Travel Codex Award Maximizer. It really is a very well-built tool and fantastic as a quick reference. I use it all the time, because it’s simply not worth memorizing every airline’s award chart as they change so often. At least we still have award charts…for the time being at least.

Just type in where you are and where you’re going, and it will spit out the cost to get there using various airline programs. I’m based in Southern California, so I’d type in LAX and ICN. Then find the airline program where you have the miles (NOT the airline you’ll be flying on – a common mistake) and the cabin you want to be in. For Business Class from LAX to ICN, the chart says 92K on Singapore Airlines or 105K on a Star Alliance airline.

That’s pretty pricey, but if those are the only miles you have, you don’t really have a choice. That’s why it’s generally better to earn points in programs like Chase Ultimate Rewards or American Express Membership Rewards, or even now with Citi. Transferable points give you flexibility to transfer to the airline that will give you the best value, and you can transfer to multiple alliances in most cases. Again, this is a topic for a much longer post and won’t be covered in detail here.

Now you need to find the availability. You know you’re booking on either Singapore Air or a Star Alliance airline. You can search on Singapore Airlines’ website, but not all airline websites are created equally. My recommendations for search are:

Star Alliance searches: United.com, Aeroplan.com

Oneworld searches: AA.com, Qantas.com, BritishAirways.com

Skyteam searches: Airfrance.us, Delta.com

Keep in mind you’re only searching for availability on these websites. The cost that appears isn’t necessarily the cost you’ll pay if you’re using a different airlines’ miles. You’ll figure it out once you search or book a few of them.

To make matters a bit more complicated, some airlines, like Singapore Air, restrict certain awards to make them available only to people using that airline’s miles. You’ll rarely find a long-haul Singapore Airlines Business or First Class flight on United or Aeroplan’s websites. For those flights, you’ll need to have Singapore Air miles and search on Singaporeair.com.

See why this is the more difficult half? Lots of rules, different prices, not easy to search, etc. It’s almost like they don’t want you to use the miles. Hmmmmmm……

Experts will use tools like Expertflyer.com, which unfortunately was just bought by TPG. Award Nexus is one I don’t use but I’ve heard can be useful as well.

Things to Watch Out For

Just remember, nearly everyone is trying to sell you something. If you either don’t care or want to give a commission to that person/website, go right ahead and click on their links. Otherwise, remember that pretty much every website and entity I mentioned above is there to make money off of your clicks.

That’s why nearly every blog also wants to post about those mistake fares. Part of it is informing readers. The other part is they want you to use their orbitz link, their hotels.com link, or their marriott.com link. It’s why websites like Secret Flying just copy from other people. They have a good name, post regularly, and have a big following.

That’s why it’s best to go to the source. Alas, even Flyertalk replaces links with their own affiliate links now (just like slickdeals and other deal sites). Why is all this worth mentioning? Because usually if they’re getting a commission, you’re losing out on something. Not always – there really are some good, honest bloggers out there. But usually you’re losing.

Always go to a website like Cashback Monitor before buying something. You’ll be surprised to find all kinds of travel websites appear, where you’ll be able to earn cash back or extra points for flights or hotels. Even Cashback Monitor has affiliate/referral links, so be mindful. But again, affiliate links are not always bad in my opinion. As long as you’re informed, you’re good to go.

What Am I Missing?

These are my personal favorite “tools” when I’m putting a trip together. I’m sure there are dozens of others, and of course I couldn’t include everything in a single post (hidden city ticketing comes to mind).

I’m sure there are plenty of websites or other tools I don’t know about that would be useful. If you’re willing to share, leave a comment and help me and others learn how to make the most of an upcoming trip!