Know the service providers:

Identify the different airlines offering flights to your intended destination so that you'll have an idea on the available choices. A lone carrier who has a monopoly of a certain sector or route can dictate and drive the ticket prices up.

Meanwhile, the competition between two or more carriers often results in lower ticket prices which are a lot more favorable to the flying public. So be glad for the competition!

Know the service:

Do you prefer a full-service airline or can you make do with a budget airline?

Ticket prices of a full-service airline are relatively higher than those of a budget airline, of course, because of the value-added services incorporated in the ticket price – for example, on-board meals and beverages, in-flight entertainment, free baggage allowance and other extra amenities that make your flight experience more comfortable.

On the other hand, the ticket price of a budget airline typically just includes the basic service of transporting the passenger from origin to destination. If you don't mind the no-frills thing or if the flight is short enough to forgo all those extras, then go with the budget airline to save on the airfare.

Know the weekly schedule of the flights:

Generally, ticket prices tend to be higher for flight dates falling on busy days. Busy days for the airline industry are usually on weekends (Fridays to Mondays) and holidays because of increased passenger traffic.

Of course, what's a greater way to spend the weekend off work than a quick vacation to have fun? If your intended travel date falls on the busy days then make sure to book your tickets way ahead of time to avail of the low fares!

Fares are significantly lower when purchased in advance, so take advantage of the lower cost. Think of the cheap airline tickets as your prize and reward for planning ahead!

However, if your travel plans are flexible enough (or your boss is kind enough to approve your vacation leave falling on a workday), book your flights on the weekdays instead.

Know the flight timetable:

There are busy routes which have multiple flights in a day. Normally, you can pick up cheap airline tickets for off-peak flights.

So if you don't mind the inconvenience of adjusting your schedule in time for those less popular flights, then go ahead and book off-peak! You'll have the added advantage of arriving early at your destination and getting a full day's worth of exploring in!

Know the available points of purchase:

Normally, tickets may be purchased through the airline's ticket offices, reservations hotline, website or accredited travel agents.

Quick Tip: Some airlines offer promotional fares which are only valid at a certain sales outlet (for example, online booking only) so be sure to know where to buy to avail of the promo!

Daily Flight Tips For Effective Travel

Price wars are your friend. Price wars involving airlines are a great opportunity for you to pick up cheap airline tickets. This typically happens when competing airlines announce a new route at the same time and attempt to price each other out of the market. Use an airline price comparison tool to find more details and search for both the airlines and the destination you are hoping to go to. And keep your eyes on travel blogs and travel based websites that have current breaking news.

Actually, a good way to procure affordable airline tickets is by looking for promotional seat sales offered by the airlines. During promotional seat sales, airline tickets sell like hotcakes!

Everyone wants a good buy, and that is the main reason why the airlines’ promotional seat sales almost always generate long queues – either in their ticket sales outlets or on their online booking websites.

But a lot of airlines offer discount flights to Thailand, so how do you know which ticket to buy?

Firstly, keep in mind that promotional seat sales are offered within a limited time frame, so you need to make a quick decision (either to buy or not buy) regarding an airline ticket purchase.

Let us first differentiate two common terms: sale period and travel period. A sale period is the duration of time customers can place their bookings, pay for them and have their tickets issued. A travel period, on the other hand, is the duration of time that these tickets may be used for flight.

Seat sales usually specify the applicable travel period of the promo, so be sure to check your intended travel dates!

Non ReBookable Discount Tickets

Tickets sold during promotional seat sales are usually discounted to a much lower price than the normal fares. As such, these discounted tickets may have more restrictions. One common restriction of discounted tickets is that they are non-rebookable.

A non-rebookable ticket means that you cannot change the date or time of your flight other than your original booking. If you don’t show up for your flight, then the ticket is forfeited.

Non ReRoutable Discount Tickets

Another common restriction is that discount tickets are non-reroutable. This means that you cannot change the itinerary of your ticket.

For example, if your original ticket has a Manila – Bangkok sector and then you change your travel plans to Manila – Chiang Mai, you cannot request the airline to change your original ticket. In short, you’d have to purchase another ticket.

Which wouldn’t really be too bad – after all, there’s always great low cost Thailand domestic flights available!

Non ReFundable Discount Tickets

One other common restriction is that discount tickets are non-refundable. This means that once you have purchased the ticket, you cannot cancel your booking and get your money back if you change your mind about your future travel plans.

Again, if you don’t show up for your flight, the ticket is forfeited.

If you must cancel your booking, ask the airline if you can still recover the travel taxes that you paid. While you may not be able to recover most of what you paid, at least you get your travel tax back, right?

Other discounted tickets or discount flights to Thailand may be re-routable, re-bookable, or refundable but they have corresponding penalties for doing so. It’s good to know these extra fees so that you are well-informed of the consequences of making changes to your flight.

Getting a discounted ticket during promotional seat sales despite all these restrictions can still be a good buy and offer you value for your money, just as long as you understand exactly what you’re getting into!

Daily Flight Tips For Effective Travel

Try booking during sales. Most low cost airlines offer seat sales at regular intervals, particularly during off-peak times of year, such as winter. You can pick up incredibly good deals on offer during such sales, sometimes where you only need to pay the taxes and charges! Flying from less busy airports during a seat sale will often let you snap up even cheaper seats.

But how exactly do you snap up that discount airfare?

Probably the easiest way is to book your tickets online. The trick is to find the real low cost carrier’s website rather than affiliate websites which may sting you with extra commission on top of your ticket costs.

After all, you’re after discount airline travel, right?

You need to look around and often search deep into Google (past page one) as well as check and double check the surcharges, extra taxes and other costs that might be added to the ticket cost.

Remember that sometimes an air fare will look amazingly cheap but have hefty taxes added. So do your due diligence at all times.

You can also check out the major airlines as these guys do discount too and run promotions and special one week flight sales. When you see one of these you just need to know one thing. ACT quick! (And book quickly). The really low cost flights tend to go crazy fast.

Another thing to keep in mind is that discount airline travel sometimes means that you have to travel LIGHT.

In other words, they may impose low baggage allowances, due to the low cost of the airfare. So don’t assume – always check what the limits are and what you can carry on.

You don’t want to get stung with a serious cash payment because your baggage was over limit – nor do you want to be refused boarding.

How To Grab Really Cheap Flights

Here’s a few things you can do to snap up those cheap airline tickets:

• Fly off-peak when you can
• Book your ticket well in advance
• Book your tickets during sales
• Allow yourself flexibility for routes
• Know the airlines and have an adventure!

The thing about cheap airline travel is that you need to be somewhat flexible and almost ready to go at notice. You may be allocated to whichever seat you can get, and they may not provide in-flight entertainment, water or food either. So, you may want to bring your own food but just double check what you can take onboard or not.

To be honest, finding a discount international airfare takes a LOT of work. You kind of need to commit to browsing online regularly checking for cheap international flights and flight specials that might be available.

But there's definitely some ways to get it happening for you. Here's how we do it.

Check Your Daily Newspaper

First and foremost make sure to check through your daily newspaper, and specifically, the flights or travel section.

Look for the ads that catch your eye showing great prices. These are the ones you're after. Just make sure you get the full details of the international flight including any extra taxes or surcharges you might be lumped with. Ask them to email you the details to be sure.

Subscribe To Airline SMS Alerts

Secondly you can subscribe to red alerts, airline mailing lists or SMS alerts. You'll be in the know way before the general public even wakes up which means you'll have first pickings of any discount international airfare!

Sometimes it costs a bit extra to join their email list or preferred subscribers (loyalty club) but the knowledge is worth it – because you get to save heaps on your ticket price!

Visit Flight Fairs And Expos

Another way is to take yourself along to tourism, travel and flight fairs and expos. These are places that the airlines go to sell tickets – usually months in advance too.

So, if you see a great cheap international flight or a queue of people at one particular flight booth they're probably there for a good reason. Most likely to snap up a really good cheap air flight or two!

You can also PLAN your trip months ahead. This has a lot of cool benefits. Firstly it forces you to plan ahead, it gives you an adventure to look forward to (and dream about), and by booking months ahead you often get to save heaps on the airfare.

The airlines are happy too in the knowledge that they have bookings for their flights months in advance.

Look For One Week Specials

Another thing you can do is look at some of the airlines that promote one day or one week special cheap flights. You'll find these promoted online and in your local media.

These one week (or one time) specials are the sort of thing that get snapped up really fast, and sometimes it's even hard to get through on the telephone. (Try booking online!) If you do come across a discounted international airfare at one third of the cost, grab it fast!

Daily Flight Tips For Effective Travel

Book your tickets online. Most low cost carriers sell their lowest cost fares exclusively through their own websites, so it's really better to do your searching online rather than phoning them up (which may result in a surcharge or higher fares). The catch is that most discount carriers lack search engine presence and are often difficult to find in search engines. Try searching for carrier name + "home" to find their websites!

These type of fares have universal appeal because you get the comfort of business class travel, usually at a greatly reduced price.

Not to mention wider seats, quality service and the other perks of business class travel including the opportunity to network and spend time with other like minded individuals!

So, how do you get a discount business class airfare then?

Well, there’s a few ways to go about it. Let’s run through each way to get your discount fare.

Sign Up For Email Alerts

One of the first things you can do is sign up to receive email notifications (or even SMS notifications) from your favorite airlines. They’ll happily email you their hot deals, upcoming flight specials, fare alerts, and so on.

You may need to become part of their loyalty program to get these alerts – but it’s worth it.

Be Flexible About Your Trip

Secondly, allow yourself some flexibility about arriving and departing near your destination. For example, if you wanted to fly to Australia from south east Asia, you could depart from Bangkok (Thailand) or Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia) – all depending on where you can get the best discount business class airfare from.

Then you could catch a low cost domestic flight to your destination in Australia.

Stay Less Than 30 Days

Another way to snap up your discount business airfare is by staying less than 30 days at your destination. You might notice many airlines that offer these fares impose 30 day maximum stay.

So if you’re staying for a couple of weeks that’s fine – otherwise look for airlines such as Virgin Atlantic or British Airways that will allow you more stay-time-freedom!

Book A Few Months Ahead

You also can book WAY ahead – a couple of months is OK. This forces you to plan ahead, and that’s a good thing!

The airlines are happy because they have pre-bookings, and you’re happy because you get to look forward to the trip and save some serious dollars at the same time!

Ask The Airlines

Ask the airlines! It pays to ask or email your favorite carrier if they can upgrade you to business class for a little bit more. Or ask them if they have discount business class airfares available. You can also look through the flights section of your local newspaper for special offers.

And remember, always compare the economy and business class airfare costs. You may find the upgrade is well worth the extra expense!

Daily Flight Tips For Comfortable Travel

The desire to fly is an idea handed down to us by our ancestors who, in their grueling travels across trackless lands in prehistoric times, looked enviously on the birds soaring freely through space, at full speed, above all obstacles, on the infinite highway of the air. - Wilbur Wright

To get low priced international flights you firstly need to have a ballpark idea about where you want to go right from the start – and be prepared to book way, way ahead of when you want to leave.

That way you'll have the flexibility to change arrival and departure travel dates or fly into different airports or cities. Try changing your flight dates if you don't get the results you want at first.

Next up – look for the off peak travel times. In other words, avoid the high travel periods like Christmas, Thanksgiving and those holidays that you know everyone and his brother will be traveling.

The logic is that during the high travel periods most flights will be full and you'd be lucky to find any discounts. On the off peak travel times however, not all flights are full and discounted flights are often plenty.

On a similar note, you sometimes can save yourself the 'weekend surcharge' (which might hit you from $50 up) by flying on weekdays. Just keep that little tidbit in mind.

And snapping up a non stop flight should help you avoid other airport taxes and surcharges too. (Apparently they add their own taxes).

Another way to get cheap international flights is by using airline consolidators. (Also called airline discounters). These guys usually offer rates lower than the airlines themselves (sometimes up to 60% off the normal published fare), but make sure you check the fare rules and requirements.

There's also the good old 'sign up for their specials' option too. Actually this is about as good as you can get! Think about it. You sign up and the airline notifies you every time they have flight specials by email or SMS if you request it.

Pay a little more to join their loyalty program and you get even more perks.

And don't forget your local media too! Always check the travel or flights section of your local newspaper to see the airlines competing hard for your business, listen for radio fares advertised, or check airline websites for updates.

The trick to finding good cheap international flights often comes down to simple research and diligence!

Here's some quick ways you can find cheap international flights:

• Always shop around, browse the airline websites, look for negotiated fares (common on international flights). Keep your eyes open for discounted prices or those 3 day flight specials.
   
• You can also try booking an international flight on the phone. The free chat 'talk to a live reservation expert' you may see on airline websites can be beneficial. Booking international flights or tickets online can be slow at times, especially in busy periods.
   
• Heard of 'destination specialists'? These guys (websites) focus on restricted and specific routes and negotiate with the airlines to get the best low cost fares for those routes. Always worth trying!
   
• Just remember that the key determining factors in the price of your international flight ticket are: flight duration, the perceived comfort of the airline, and the number of stops.

Two quick recommendations for discount international travel advice are BargainTravel.com and ArtofTravel.com. Have fun!

Daily Flight Tips For Comfortable Travel

Keep yourself relaxed. Place one of the provided airline pillows between your lower back (just below your ribs) and the seat. This will help to ease back soreness. Alternatively, pack your own neck pillow to support your neck. You can purchase inexpensive inflatable neck pillows at most travel shops for around $20.00.

But what if there isn't any other alternative, or the remaining options are way too time-consuming and physically exhausting?

Don't write off your travel plans just yet, because here are ways you can minimize your airfare expenses and find good cheap flights to Thailand with just a little effort involved:

Attend Travel And Tourism Fairs And Expos:

These fairs are usually organized by the government, with the participation of various airlines, travel agencies and tour operators who have joined together in a common venue to promote travel and tourism.

Ticketing kiosks are set up by the participating airlines to give you the convenience of booking your itineraries and purchasing your tickets right there, with their friendly staff eager to assist you in your Asian travel needs. (Talk about travel shopping from one booth to another!)

Depending on the organizer, a small fee may be collected for one to be admitted inside the expo. Let me assure you that paying the small entrance fee is worthwhile, because you get to book flights at fares which are way cheaper than normal!

As part of their marketing strategy and specific to this event, airlines usually sell their tickets at "expo rates" to encourage travelers to purchase their tickets way ahead of their intended travel dates.

Leaf Through The Daily Newspaper:

See those little advertisements inserted as space fillers near the top or bottom of the page? Take some time to read those too, because you just might be surprised to find ads from travel agencies offering promo fares, or very tempting cheap flights to Thailand!

Skim through the classified ads as well, for you just might find a bargain amidst all those lines. Lastly, don't ignore the full-color ads, intentionally placed in between pages of the news, announcing an airline's seat sale!

Subscribe To Mailing Lists And Alerts:

If you want to be informed of an airline's ongoing and upcoming promos or cheap travel packages, include your email address to their mailing list. You can go to the airline's website, enter your email address, and then click the link to be subscribed to the mailing list.

Subscription is free anyway, so you lose nothing by receiving an extra email in your inbox.

Some airlines also offer a mobile update service where the updates are in the form of a text message or SMS alert to your cell phone. There may be minimal charges charged by your mobile network operator, so it's best to inquire first before you request for the update service.

Daily Flight Tips For Comfortable Travel

Do periodic stretches. Not only does stretching help keep the blood flowing, but it potentially alleviates any cramping and pains that come from sitting for an extended period of time. Place your hands on the armrests and slowly twist your torso to loosen your upper body.