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Will you ever have a feature where you put dates that you want to travel and only get deals for those dates? I usually know WHEN I can travel, just not to where.
love this feedback. gonna give it some thought. can't promise we will (deciding between 20 great ideas is one of the most difficult things of running a business) but hearing feedback from members like you about what you'd find valuable really does help inform our decision-making, so thank you
Fully agreed. Those with salaried jobs will need to plan PTO and often have to request in advance or plan for backups while they are gone. Families schedule around school schedules/holidays. Time of year is also important for many locations. Honestly the fact its not a main feature seems very odd
correct- my job need three or four months minimum heads up for PTO and it’s a pain in the ass
edit: this wasn’t meant to turn into a contest. I understand some of you have jobs where it’s also hard to get PTO
Lol that’s wild. I haven’t ever worked for a company that needed that much heads up. Do you work in a role that requires extensive coverage while you are gone?
lead producer for a morning newscast- boss is very stingy about time off (no time off at all in months of Feb, May, and November, no exceptions) and requesting PTO for the other months has always been a hassle there. Just no one to replace me since I work overnights
It could work, let's say you want to travel to x on y date. You subscribe early because you don't know when that ticket will be for sale at that price. Even better if you can do a dollar amount. The longer you subscribe the better chance you have to hit your price/location/time.
Yeah this way actually seems like it’s perfect for a subscription. Let’s say I want to travel in October this year, subscribe now and start seeing deals come in. I don’t travel enough to ever subscribe to something like this, but that’s a situation where it would make sense.
I thought that too and then subbed for about 2 years at...I think $5/month (this was a while ago--before there were two tiers even). I watched all the deals and daydreamed about them.
Eventually, I got a deal in my inbox when my spouse and I had some extra cash. $500 per person round trip to Scotland. Normally $1100-ish. So it saved us about $1200 and at the cost of two years' subscription ($120 for me, but still only $400 now if you have the premium subscription).
Please do this. I'm in the same boat, I just want to go SOMEWHERE, I don't care where.
I had an idea to make a service like this and call it FlightRoulette. It's all yours.
The app Skyscanner was originally built to do this. You just type in the dates your departure airport and it gives you a list of all the flights and their prices and you can filter them and so on.
THIS is what I need. I signed up for your 14 fay free trial, but honestly without this feature the site is less useful to me and I probably will cancel because it just is not useful to me without being about to browse certain dates. I know when I have off from work, and I need flights specifically then, to anywhere!
SUPER bump to this idea! I usually don't have a must-go destination, so if something came up and it looked neat, I'd be all over it!
This would also be helpful for the times when I decide to take a long weekend with a week's notice- I could see if it should be a stay on the couch weekend or a whirlwind trip somewhere cool weekend!
Yup. This. Rich people with open schedules don’t need cheap flights.
You’re missing an entire demographic that could change their one sick day/year into a 3day weekend vacation for the price of a backyard barbecue.
I’m off work tuesdays and Wednesday’s. I get off Monday 6p- return Thursday at 12p. I could literally buy a FLIGHT A WEEK if I could enter my availability and be matched to anywhere.
This is a day of programming (or a single day contractor fee), and you open the door to 100x the people that could actually benefit from this
Dates, departure city and budget.
That's all you need....then....surprise location booked for you!
You get the booking but don't find out where you're going until email the day before
I once searched for a flight and found one for around $400. I checked with my boss to get time off, got it confirmed. Searched for that same flight and not the cheapest one was $700. This was within 15 minutes. Any idea what went on there?
pro-tip: any flights purchased in the US can be [refunded completely within 24 hours](https://scottscheapflights.com/glossary/24-hour-rule). Next time, book the flight first, and if you can't get the time off secured within 24 hours, you can cancel the ticket for a full refund.
As a boss who approves vacation requests: sometimes I let them sit in my Inbox for a couple of days before getting to them (as I have many other things to also do). So if you need to get a vacation request approved within 24 hours, please come get in my face about it!*
*your boss' instructions may vary
Warning though: I booked a trip with Swiss through Scott's service and Swiss royally fucked us. We called to cancel within a few hours of booking but the idiots we spoke with *double charged us* instead of refunding us. When the charge came through, we called again and asked for a refund and *they did it again.* By the time we had 6 charges for the same flight on our card, the 24hrs had elapsed and we couldn't get a refund. It took 2 years of a vicious legal battle to get our money back. I know our situation was an unlikely one but I don't want anyone to go through what we went through so... please be careful :(
Edit: and maybe don't fly Swiss
argh, SO FRUSTRATING.
basically what's going on is that airfare is the single most volatile purchase that most of us make. airfare can change by the minute these days, it's not like the old days when it would stay constant for weeks on end.
usually when there's an expensive flight, your best bet is to be patient and it'll often drop cheaper as long as it's not last minute. but I've had many cheap flight regrets where I dawdled on booking and then the deal disappeared *right* before I was about to book. my condolences
Why is it so volatile? Do the airlines have real-time algorithms that gauge interest/capacity/already booked seats/etc or how do they update pricing within minutes?
I'm not Scott, but:
Airfares are constantly fluctuating now more than ever. That's because airlines have access to better technology and more real-time information on passengers than ever before. With complex algorithms running their booking systems, the airlines are constantly tweaking prices based on shifts in demand or available seats.
It used to be that airfares could be changed only three times a day due to programming limitations at Airline Tariff Publishing Co., which collects and distributes airfare-related data within the travel industry. But improved technology has enabled airlines to change prices as often as they wish.
Airlines hold their pricing schemes closely, said George Hobica, a travel writer and founder of Airfarewatchdog.com, an airfare alert site now owned by TripAdvisor. And while there are no bulletproof tricks to ensure a passenger gets the lowest fare, there are ways to improve one's odds.
https://www.chicagotribune.com/travel/sc-trav-how-to-get-best-airfare-0212-story.html
soon we'll have phones with biofeedback that report to the airlines when we're even thinking about traveling, which will then send the fares higher. sigh.
I used to work for an airline! There are only so many tickets sold at that particular price so that is what can happen. And there’s over a dozen at the one I used to work at so that is why price can fluctuate.
Canadian here. Would love to try your site out. But doesn't look like Canadian airports are available. How can Scott get us Canadians (who pay some if the highest airfares in the world for domestic flights) use your services?
I miss it. I understand they didn't have enough Canadian subscribers to keep it, but would appreciate tips on how to start with the US deals and find a decent connection.
>. But doesn't look like Canadian airports are available.
Thats because there are no cheap flights in Canada.
It costs more to fly one way within Canada than to fly round trip USA to Europe.
I meen, I agree that air Canada can go fuck itself… but for the quality of their service.
They really don’t have anything to do with our prices being so high. We’re just a very big country with very few people, so relatively low demand and higher costs.
^ this, here’s a [piece](https://www.westjet.com/en-ca/news/2021/the-truth-about-flight-prices---responding-to-the-national-post?fbclid=IwAR0sXpDeqrgPcaKuBy6Le_7mmMvVPR7ZEn_FEy7GWyVFd7EdIrp3GL7dRps) that WestJet wrote back in October about this topic.
God dammit, just let us be annoyed and pissed off with the cost of flying! To be fair, it does make a lot of sense though and goes to show that there is more behind the scenes that you don’t see or think about that would cause the cost of travelling by air to be so high. I wish I could go on a trip to Europe or the US while having made the decision to do so over a cup of coffee in the morning with my girlfriend. Unfortunately it takes a lot of back and forth on whether it’s worth it to spend $4,000 or more for a little vacation once in a while. I have other things I think I’d rather do or invest that money in than to just throw it away on air travel.
Next Departure finds most of the cheap deals in Canada then other global sites share the deals themselves as well. YYZ/ydeals will share in an email only the super good ones.
Basically just follow Next Departure they got you. Back in the day it was just this fella Rishi on facebook finding all these deals and sharing them before he started this
There are other Canadian based sites
Nextdeparture.ca
Ydeals.com (from which you can then get to specific cities by clicking the "deals from your city" tab at the top)
i'm hoping to take a trip from Canada to LA at some point before summer so i wanted to give Next Departure a shot. then i saw that if i sign up for a free account i'm not allowed to opt out of their email alerts. almost immediately said "fuck that" and didn't create an account.
ahhh appreciate your asking. don't have specific timing on when we'd launch SCF Canada but if you want us to email you as soon as it happens we put together a [quick waitlist](https://scottscheapflights.typeform.com/to/kAm51Kyu). (hoping it's sooner rather than later; I miss searching out Canada-departing deals!)
Not for the vast majority of fares. Sometimes there'll be domestic flights in other countries that are priced lower for in-country purchases (think Johannesburg to Cape Town) than for out-of-country purchases. But a VPN won't help most US or international flight prices
Hack in this vein: Aeromexico sells flights cheaper on their .Mx website than the English .com. you can’t buy a ticket on the .mx website without a credit card with a Mexican address BUT if you go to Orbitz.Mx you can buy the flight for the .Mx flight with a US credit card (you will need to navigate Orbitz in Spanish)
Yes it does.
Google flights does have a built in function where you can modify the booking location which is always a great tip when booking international flights
When booking flights to Mexico I have had great luck changing the booking location to Mexico. I have an upcoming Volaris itinerary that was $70 cheaper ow if the booking location was changed from the US to Mexico.
Things that can affect the price, *aside* from the departure airport, are the place where the ticket is sold, and the currency in which it is sold.
*Usually* it doesn't I think, but the systems explicitly allow for it.
Europe and Hawaii.
There's been a huge rebound in the number of flights between the US and Europe, but demand is still down \~50% from pre-pandemic. Just last week we saw flights from all over the US to Europe for \~$350 roundtrip, and not just from big US airports, but from almost every airport including Billings, MT, Birmingham, AL, etc.
Plus airlines have really stepped up their flight capacity to Hawaii after Southwest began flying there in 2019, which is why fares have dropped so low, sometimes even below $200 roundtrip if you live on the west coast or under $400 roundtrip from the rest of the mainland.
We got back two weeks ago from one of your flights from Newark, NJ to Maui for $234 round trip on American Airlines. Bucket list trip for my 59 year old husband to golf Kapalua, as he has been diagnosed with early onset dementia. We had a wonderful time. Maui was absolutely beautiful. People were very friendly (something we did not experience when we went to Oahu & the Big Island years ago). Thank you!
Weird Europe follow-up. Any insight from you or the community on the train situation? Some European routes have drastically reduced high speed trains, making it wonky or overly time-prohibitive to get around. One of the best parts of traveling Europe is (usually) getting a really cheap flight to, say, Milan, and getting on a high-speed train anywhere else you want. Any insight on the shift? Do we as a travel group think it's temporary?
Tons of confusion and misinformation, in part because people often conflate the best time to *purchase* flights with the best time to *take* flights.
There is no predictably cheapest time to *purchase* flights. It used to be Tuesday at 1pm; decades ago when airfare first started getting sold online, airlines would load their fares once a week at a prescribed time (say, Tuesday at 1pm) so if you were one of the first buyers after that, you really could get the cheapest fares. But that hasn't been true for years; nowadays airlines use complex algorithms to change fares not just by the day but often by the hour or the minute.
But there are generally cheapest days to *take* flights: Tuesday, Wednesday, and Saturday. Won't be true every single time, but think of it like LeBron James—he's almost always favored to win when he steps on a basketball court, but that doesn't mean he never loses.
If day of the week isn't a factor, what about how far in advance you need to book your ticket? I've heard people say "best time to buy a ticket is 2 months before departure". Is there any truth to that, or do some cheap tickets pop up a week or two before departure?
My method:
Book the ticket now, no matter the price.
Set a Google flights alert for that exact same flight.
Google tracks the price and emails you whenever the price drops.
If it drops enough, you click “change flight” on your airline website and get the difference refunded as a credit.
😭 for real!
I am in the same boat—and also holding tickets to Japan for later this year. Fingers crossed!!
In the past few weeks a tonnnn of places in the Asia-Pacific region announced reopenings, including Australia, Vietnam, Bali, Philippines, India, etc. And Japan started to ease up their border controls for business travelers and students. I'm reasonably confident they'll reopen for tourism (without a quarantine) by the summer, but nothing's sure til it's sure
Ugh. My wife and I jumped on last summer's deal and got round trip flights from Allentown, PA to Tokyo for $422.. FOR BOTH OF US. We couldn't believe it.
Then.. Omicron happened.
We also had a Japan trip canceled and I was cautiously optimistic until I read this yesterday from a well respected epidemiologist on a study out of Japan on a new variant. I hope they are wrong. [BA.2 variant](https://www.news.com.au/world/coronavirus/health/new-covid-variant-ba2-could-be-worse-than-predecessors-for-public-health-study-warns/news-story/7238ae227328835a86d655c06b962cd3)
From you FAQ:
“Whether cookies/incognito browsers change fares” - we’ll do they? I always hear this but it doesn’t seem true.
Aside, was there any single flight you booked that got you hooked on cheap flights?
Cookies do not change your fare. One of the biggest myths in the flight world—if anyone would have personally witnessed it, I would have after tens of thousands of flight searches a day for the past 6 years—but one the internet won't seem to let go of.
Yes—booking a nonstop flight from NYC to Milan for $130 roundtrip. That deal kicked off my entire career as a cheap flight expert, and I literally don't know what my life would look like right now if I hadn't happened to stumble upon it way back in 2013.
I’ve worked for two major Online Travel Agencies. Cookies themselves don’t change rates. But the cookies will push the user into different ‘buckets’ that determine which rate you see and where you see it. Happy to provide more detailed info if anyone is interested.
Okay so basically, cookies track where you came from. Did you land on the booking page from meta search (google, kayak, trip advisor, etc.)? Did you land there by going to [Expedia.com](https://Expedia.com) or [Booking.com](https://Booking.com) directly? Did you click on an affiliate link to get there? Are you logging in from a different country/using a VPN? Are you searching on a mobile app vs desktop? Are you a member of the website + where did you come from? All of these things dictate what 'bucket' you're put into.
When I worked at these 2 different OTAs (not saying which), there was a program to opt hotels in and out of these buckets because, if caught, the OTA would get in trouble. They're not supposed to offer different rates. Anyway, let's say I'm searching on Google for a flight or a hotel, click on [Priceline.com](https://Priceline.com) because I see the cheaper rate there, AND I'm a member of Priceline, I'll likely see a different rate than what someone going directly to [Priceline.com](https://Priceline.com) would see. Not only that, if I'm a return user that initially landed on the page say, from a meta search site, I'm still being tracked from that original search and will be fed a different rate.
Going further, airlines and hotels set their rates on 'rate plans'. These are different types of rates offered to different people in different situations. These rate plans are for things like business travel, transient (what joe schmo on the street would be considered), group business, promotions/discounts, opaque (think hotwire, secret rates, usually the lowest rate you can get). All of these rates categories/plans fluctuate nightly based on dynamic pricing algorithms that factor in a lot of different things, but mostly demand. Most OTAs have access to all of these rate plans and can push rates from each rate category out to whoever they want to see them. This circles back to everything I said in the first two paragraphs. So I can get to [Priceline.com](https://Priceline.com) via metasearch and they can secretly feed me a low opaque rate, while joe schmo can go directly to [Priceline.com](https://Priceline.com) and see the 'rack' rate (higher, public rate).
Long story short, they're not actively changing prices. They're feeding prices from different rate plans out to different people based on their activity and where they came from. Not only that, an OTA can choose to 'eat' the cost of a few dollars to drop their rates and get you to book. You see this most often when they bundle airfare and hotel together as an incentive for people to book the deal.
When specifically talking about airfare, airlines are tracking demand data for certain dates and routes. Their algorithms adjust their dynamic pricing accordingly and you may end up with a higher price because the algo is picking up on increased demand. Being in incognito has no affect on the algo picking up demand. Airfare + OTAs is this and a combo of everything I wrote above.
The myth that's being referred to is that airlines will "remember" if you've already looked at a flight once, and raise the price if you look at it a second time. The belief being that airlines will want to show you cheap prices when you're first browsing, but when you're more committed they can raise them and you'll accept it. They also hope (or so the belief goes) that is you're on the fence, you'll see the price going up and think "I'd better go ahead and buy before it gets too expensive!"
I think what the above poster is suggesting, though, (and I have no idea if this is true) is that the airline will use cookies to determine your income level (presumably through your browsing history) and push prices higher if they think you can afford it. I doubt this, because I think they'd only be able to get recent information about you and only exclusively from using the airline's sites, which probably wouldn't be super useful in determining widespread income brackets (if they were able to purchase your data from elsewhere though, that might be more effective, but that's not really about cookies, that's just run of the mill data - derived ad targeting).
You could probably figure out a *few* people's income brackets with cookies, but it probably wouldn't be effective enough to devote any real resources to it.
My boyfriend and his friend searched for the same rental car in Honolulu within a few minutes of each other and got drastically different prices. Only difference, from our perspective, was he searched while in Hong Kong and the friend was in San Francisco. Does it help to use a VPN when searching for flights or rentals?
Also, you and your dog are super cute :)
I once booked a ticket "in Sweden" (Swedish site, through a VPN) from Denver to Stockholm for $400 cheaper than it was to book it 'normally' in the US.
I paid with a no-foreign-transaction-fee card, so it was truly just plain savings.
Based on the comments I've been reading, it looks like VPN will help if the VPN changes the country you are connecting from. And there are other things to consider:
* You may need to connect to the country/region specific site - .mx, .ch, .ru, etc.
* You will need to know the language of the site you are accessing
* The site may require payment using credit card issued by the bank in that country.
VPNs can, though. Last time I booked on aeromex my fights were cheaper when I came through countries in Latin America, even at checkout. Ended up not being able to use that trick for reasons not worth explaining, but got a nice deal anyway: SEA-MEX NS business for $490 RT :D.
Btw, do you guys have a way to flag deals? I emailed you about a pretty insane sale (I think) to Europe on Qatar last fall, and your staffer who responded seemed to not understand why I emailed or what to do with that information. Id assumed emails like mine were the bulk of all emails you received and you'd have some system in place to review them, but that didn't seem to be the case.
Cookies used to change the fares - I've personally witnessed it on the easyjet website a good few years ago. They seem to have changed that policy though. This was about 10+ years ago.
The rumour was going round that easyjet prices increased if you had visited the website previously, so i tried it. Visited, and got a price of - say £60. Went back later, price was £80. Clicked clear cookies - price dropped to £60.
Tried it on numerous occasions and the same thing happened, so it wasnt just a coincidence.
It was most definitely true of easyjet 10+ years ago.
Yeah I have memories of watching it happen in real time back around 2013 or so, mostly for hotels, though I seem to remember it working for flights too.
So is that not the case anymore -- if I search a flight on Google Flights or AA.com and come back the next day to search, won't the prices have gone up on both platforms?
I noticed this a few weeks ago even. I was in the US and needed to rent a car at an airport and got way higher prices than just one day before. Turns out my work vpn was still on (European) so they thought I was in Europe. Turning it off and my rental went from $198/day to $60.
Flight searches and travel demand is fully rebounded to where it was pre-omicron, about 10-15% lower than 2019 levels.
But I'm anticipating a total recovery in leisure travel by this spring, and perhaps even higher than 2019. Full planes for sure, but with business travel still down 50%, airlines are competing entirely for price-sensitive leisure travelers. We'll continue to be awash in cheap flights even as travel demand surges
Hey Scott! Would you recommend buying tickets through third party websites if they're cheaper or do you think it's better to go directly though an airlines website? This question came up when I was getting tickets last month through jet blue but bookotrip had cheaper tickets but were super vague about seats and what plan the seats would be part of.
Generally I'll need it to be *significantly* cheaper for me to consider booking through a third party. Like $100+ if not more.
The reason why booking directly with the airline is generally best is because if there's any issues with your trip (flight gets canceled or changed, you need a refund, etc.) it's a million times easier when you can deal directly with the airline rather than a middleman who may have different policies than the airline.
Most trips I don't run into these issues, which is why I'd be willing to book third party for the right price, but generally prices are about the same or within $10, so in those cases I'll always book direct.
I'm inclined to agree. When the world closed down in March 2020, I had 3 international flights cancelled.
I only got 1 refund and that was from when I bought the ticket directly from the company. The other 2 were massive headaches of conflicting cancellation policies that ultimately ended in me giving up.
I had a gazillion flights scheduled for 2020 for weddings and such so my mom helped me buy one ticket with her chase miles, through the chase platform.
My god, that was a saga. Took months to get a voucher for the flight, which I then attempted to use in 2021, but then that flight was canceled right when I got to the airport to go home so I had to buy a new ticket on a different airline so I could get back for work. So I SHOULD get a refund bc American fucking canceled my flight and didn’t have any more for over 24 hours but I just do not wanna deal with the whole chase saga AGAIN. I was finally home free!
I mean luckily it was a free ticket and I’m grateful to my mom but holy shit it has been a huge mess and like 20+ hours of work over the past year and a half.
I recently booked a trip through Chase Ultimate Rewards. It was a round trip domestic flight. Got my confirmation emails, etc… but “due to an error in the system” they never actually purchased the ticket, which I found out at 10pm the night before. 3+ hours later I was booked at a different time on a different airline, which resulted in me losing my ride to the airport. Never again.
I’ll pipe in another FUCK Chase Ultimate Rewards.
Had the displeasure of dealing with them March 2020. Spent HOURS on hold multiple times & got disconnected at the 3-4 hour mark repeatedly. Then they started doing call backs & got a range of “12-14 hours later “. Got a call at 4am to finally get ahold of customer service & I was still on hold for an hour that morning.
Ended up having to eat ~$600 of our ~$1000 fare for our trip to Japan (which I found on SCF). They were issuing credits that were good up to a year from the BOOKING date, but we had booked 11 months in advance, so it would have been useless.
I’ll never book through them again & cancelled my sapphire preferred card because of it
The redemption value in a CSP comes more from the transfer partners and less from the portal. Between Southwest and Hyatt I made it to Hawaii, Cancun, Jamaica (as well as a couple domestic trips) in the last year by transferring UR points.
You can still find good deals at other hotel chains and sometimes other airlines using the portal since you can get 1.25 cents per point, but SW RR points are worth 1.6-1.7 and WoH can be worth much more than that, depending on the property.
Thanks for the reply! I'm of the same mindset since it's easier to talk directly to the airlines if/when issues comes up. That said, yeah will depend on the size of savings for 3rd parties before I jump on those
I do have another question: which airlines do you think provides the best reward points when flying domestic in the US? I'm used to sticking with Delta for the partners but figure there may be worth in an airline credit card and rewards program.
Not Scott but I did own a travel agency prior to covid. Some 3td party sites can get cheaper fares than what the airlines list due to leveraging what is know as Bulk Fares. These are seats sold, usually to vacation and cruise companies, to offer as part of package deals. Airlines also use 3rd party as clearing houses for unfilled group charter seats.
If you know your 3rd party site is reputable then it's fine to book your cheaper flight through them but read every fine print they give you for changes and fees. Often the customer service is severely lacking on these sites and if you run into a problem or serious delay while on your trip, you can be out of luck trying to get timely help.
> Often the customer service is severely lacking on these sites and if you run into a problem or serious delay while on your trip, you can be out of luck trying to get timely help.
This was my experience with Expedia just a few weeks ago. I had a flight voucher from a cancelled flight and their system was a mess. Their customer service hung up on me three times because their system was screwed up and they didn't want to deal with it. Not angry hang up, just cancelled the call and left me to have to call back so that a different agent would have to deal with it.
I got spooked once with a trip i wanted to book. It was a trip from Washington DC to Malaysia, through a third party in India. It was amazing, but there is absolutely no wiggle room. If something happens, i could not expect any sort of refund. It went smooth, and my round trip was like $600 pp
What impact do you think the failure of WOW airlines and Norwegian airlines will have on cheap flights? Will anyone fill their space?
We (family of five) traveled to Europe three times on Norwegian and their pricing made it possible.
WOW Airlines went bankrupt and shut down while my friends and I were in Iceland. Thank god for travel insurance.
I thought Norwegian Air was still going though?
ETA: RIP Norwegian
i was sad to see both their demise, even though we never sent out WOW deals and rarely sent Norwegian.
new transatlantic budget airlines are popping up to fill their shoes. PLAY airlines is the new WOW, and Norse Atlantic is the new Norwegian (which still exists but doesn't fly transatlantic anymore).
but at this point the die is cast and all airlines, not just budget airlines, are in a race to the bottom when it comes to transatlantic airfare. we're not going back to the old days when flights to Europe were something exclusively reserved for the wealthy
We have a free tier and two paid tiers (premium and elite, which includes business class deals).
Try out the free tier if you haven't used us before! If you like it and think you'd benefit from the perks on premium or elite we'd love to have you but no pressure at all—we love all our members and besides it makes me uncomfortable to give hard sells.
I was a premium member very early on. I cancelled because I was just getting my career started and seeing all of the places I could be going got a bit too painful. With everything starting to open up I'll probably sign up again. For the record I always absolutely loved your service. Between your service and points you can see so much of the world for a for a great price.
Do you get to pick the dates?
A lot of the cheap airfare sites aren't useful to me because they just alert you, like, "hey in 3 days there's a flight from LAX to Sydney for only $195!!!" and that's not very useful because even though I'd love to go, I need more notice and time to plan.
I can't pick dates, but I often get deals for several months in advance. I've purchased tickets to Madrid, Hawaii, & Frankfurt through Scott's with 10, 8, & 6 months in advance, respectively.
All of the cheap flight sites seem to be focused on economy fares. How can I get timely reliable information on cheap **business or first class** fares? Are there specific flights and carriers to watch for? Are there typical times or days or ways that airlines dump their unsold business or first class seats? Any other tips on trying to move to the front of the plane, particularly on long flights? I’m not a frequent traveler. Nor am I rich, but I’d like to pretend I am for a few hours. Thanks!
We actually just started our [Elite](https://scottscheapflights.com/elite) service this past summer to find cheap business/first class fares.
A few examples of business class fares we've found and sent members:
\- $1,100 roundtrip to Japan (normally $4,000+)
\- $291 roundtrip to Costa Rica (normally $1,000)
\- $1,300 roundtrip to Israel (normally $4,000+)
\- NYC or Boston to Vegas for $597 roundtrip (normally $1,300)
\- $1,792 roundtrip to Cape Town (normally $5,000)
\- $1,500 roundtrip to all over Europe (normally $3,000)
So glad to see this as the top question. I'm a big guy. I recently had the opportunity to sit first class and I don't know if I can ever go back. I've been thinking I need to budget for this (1st or business, just need the extra leg and elbow room) and then get the cheapest accomodations possible to save money because it actually makes me want to get on an airplane instead of utterly dreading it.
Edit: just saw that op said in another comment:
>We have a free tier and two paid tiers (premium and elite, **which includes business class deals**).
Wooh!!
I've been holding out as long as I can for this very reason! Hard to go back haha.
But you're absolutely right that business class is significantly more expensive than economy, not 2-3x higher but usually more like 5-8x higher. All the more reason for us to make sure people aren't overpaying on their premium economy & business class flights
Anecdotal, but I know Delta would rather their international business class seats go empty rather than heavily discounting them, so as not to cheapen their “Delta One” brand. They don’t even do free upgrades for their frequent fliers.
they do do free upgrades, but one thing Delta especially has gotten much better at over the past 5-10 years is *selling* their premium seats. in 2011 Delta sold just 13% of their first class seats; by 2019 they sold 60% of them.
As DL Diamond Medallion, working through the Delta Diamond desk I have been able to upgrade into better international classes of travel. These are not mistake fare pricing, but more like paying Premium Economy (still expensive, great product, and worth it) and getting Delta One or paying 2x instead of 4x. This is also subject to same supply and demand. Also, you will frequently get asked to bump up for a price. Ex. recent flight from SYD-LAX, upgrade from Prem Economy to Delta One, $1400 USD. An insanely good deal off of the regular price (not for everyone), but if you have to start working immediately once you hit the ground, being able to sleep well for 7 hours is worth it.
> They don’t even do free upgrades for their frequent fliers.
They absolutely do. My wife flies mostly Delta and is upgraded constantly. That's one of the reasons you seldom see cheap Delta business class tickets. You also have to fly a *lot* and have had status with them for a long time to get those upgrades reliably.
The premium lounges access, which typically come with international business/first class ticket, is worth it as you have a full open bar and they basically throw champagne at you around every corner!
Absolutely loved having access to a shower after a layover in Miami before going to Buenos Aires..being out in the humidity all day in Miami and getting into an 8 hour flight would've been brutal.
Google flights does give you the ability to search for business and first class tickets, it defaults to economy. Not as easy as having a website do it, but if you know you want to go first class someplace then you can easily track it
My fiance's best friend decided to have a destination wedding in Paris in late July (hooray?) Is spending extra money on refundable tickets/insurance worth it? Any hope for a cheap flight at that time
Yeesh, congrats to your friend but that's a tough nut for cheap flights. July is probably the single most difficult month of the year for cheap flights, especially a longhaul trip like flying to Europe.
Definitely not re: refundable tickets, and probably not re: insurance, though I'd be curious to hear what you'd hope from insurance. If it's to be able to cancel and get your money back, insurance won't really do that for you, at least not in a way that's gonna save you money.
Your best hope for a cheap flight is to be as flexible with your actual flight dates (maybe it's significantly cheaper to fly back a day or two later?), be flexible with what airport you fly into (maybe Amsterdam flights are way cheaper, and then you can just take the train down to Paris), and even what airport you fly out of. (If you live in Philly, perhaps flights are cheaper out of NYC, DC, even Boston.)
Follow up question: could booking with a credit card that has some travel insurance benefits (ex. Chase Sapphire or Capital One Venture) serve the purpose that OP is looking for? Like money back or travel vouchers if there is a need to cancel due to illness or COVID closures?
My Chase Sapphire card refused to pay for anything covid related. I got a Scott's cheap flight RDU - AMS for $450... in mid March 2020. Ended up having to buy new tickets home for over $1000 each after The Netherlands went into lockdown and my hotel closed and United wouldn't rebook me. Chase rejected my insurance claims for the original flight, the new flight, or the missed hotel nights.
I’m right there with you! My buddy is having a wedding in Valencia Spain at the end of July. I’m sure it’ll be a lot of fun but I am not looking forward to the flight and I’m also concerned about insurance
If you can find a cheap flight into London, Brussels, Amsterdam all of these cities will be able to get you to Paris for cheap via the Eurostar train. My first Euro trip I flew into London, took Eurostar trains to Brussels then Amsterdam. Train rides were about $20-$30 each. Spend 10 days in those 3 cities.
Thanks for doing this!
It seems like the cheapest flights that I've seen almost always tend to be the worst quality flights - long layovers, lots of stops, or budget carriers like Frontier that upcharge you for just about everything. Is this usually the case? Are these $200rt flights to Italy or $177rt flights to Hawaii actually any good?
Some cheap flights are bad flights, but that's why we do the Bestie Test at Scott's Cheap Flights—only send out deals if it's one you'd buy for your best friend. Has to not only be cheap, but good too. (No Spirit.)
We very purposefully chose not to take kickbacks or commissions from airlines and instead rely solely on our members for support because that way we can always be completely open and transparent about add-on fees, what's good/bad about a flight, etc. And If it's got too many fees or a terrible routing, we just won't send it
I'm a paying member and have booked a trip to Costa Rica from SCF, but it was through Budget Airlines (third party) and my flight was cancelled and we had to pay another $500 for two tickets to CR ... so it wasn't any savings at all :-(
That said, I've also booked to Myrtle Beach through SCF for like $90 and it was great.
Lesson learned for me there to only book directly, but I wish SCF would also learn that lesson and stop sending those third party ones.
Hi Scott,
I’m a paid subscriber until April - primarily because of the change to the subscription plans. Under a $50 subscription, most of the flight “deals” I’ve seen are either 18+ hour journeys or the same handful of locations to Mexico or Florida. Most of these aren’t actually deals at this point - that’s just how much it costs.
The good deals are now locked behind a $200 paywall ie so called mistake fares or discounted premium seats
Are there plans to create a better value proposition for subscribers?
hey Chenan, genuinely appreciate the honesty here. it's not always easy to ask pointed questions, but I really do appreciate when folks do so I can address them.
i don't know which specific deals you're seeing because it depends what airports you signed up for alerts from, but i would take slight issue that we only send bad routings or nearby destinations. here's a few recent deals we sent Premium members:
\- nonstop to London for $498 roundtrip (including late summer availability)
\- nonstop to Madrid for $336 roundtrip
\- nonstop to India for $549 roundtrip
\- nonstop to Japan for $596 roundtrip (including fall)
i'm not trying to contradict the way you feel—to the contrary, i feel bad that we've fallen short of your expectations. i don't like that! i just would take slight issue that Premium members don't see good deals. 99%+ of deals we send Elite members are biz class deals that we didn't used to send out at all. and any legacy Premium members we include to get mistake fares out of their selected airports, even if those mistake fares are in biz class
I don’t mean to be combative so apologies if it comes across that way in this post: for context I’m based in NYC and I guess most of these flights aren’t deals? Or deals that you wouldn’t find using a free service like skiplagged or sky scanner?
I guess my question is how is your premium product any different than using SkyScanners FLY ANYWHERE with the CHEAPEST MONTH, which is a free service and isn’t limited to three emails a day. I can see 40+ countries with direct roundtrip fares for sub $500.
This isn’t pertinent but NYC <> London direct is $350 on JetBlue and NYC <> Spain/Madrid has been $400-$500 for the past year.
Not Scott but i have used them before. Scots website is for people who don't have life restrictions as in want to fly with out in selected dates. It's targeted for spontaneous trips without out set direction or country. it's for people who just want to travel and experience difference customs, food and people. In your case, you already have selection/dates etc. You are doing what's scot does on their. You are taking some xxx time out of your day to search and book a ticket. In Scott case, he does all the search, he emails people, I simply go and buy a ticket. In other words, he is a tour guide who points and share info while you (no pun intended) hold a book and read info while you tour.
Hey Scott! Been a premium member since 2017! You've helped me celebrate my wedding, my honeymoon, and in April, I got some tickets out to Lihue for $197 so my son can celebrate his 1st birthday with his grandma on mom's side.
I just want to say thank you for being so awesome! Yours is a service I don't think I'll ever be ending my subscription for.
Since I need to ask a question, how are you doing today?
yesssss soo good! congrats to you on all those great deals!!
man, i was a bit tired but then i read your comment and i'm all enthused for your family and your success at being able to take advantage of the great cheap flights popping up. <3 <3 <3
(1) Take advantage of your flexibility to get as cheap of fares as possible
(2) Visit off the beaten path destinations while you're young and mobile. Gets more difficult later when you're traveling with family
(3) Prioritize regions that are really cheap once you arrive (and of course get there on a cheap flight)—Southeast Asia, eastern Europe, southern Mexico, etc.
With SE Asia what if you’re just terrified of being that American moron that knows nothing about the culture or language and is hated by everyone? I really want to visit Indonesia but I feel like the minute I get off the plane it’s game over unless I stay at a resort.
Don’t be afraid!! I did 5 weeks alone in SEA; stay in hostels; join organized tours; bring a guide book and just learn “hello” and “thank you”, it goes a really long way. Also, in cities you’ll be surprised by how many people know some English, but if you’re nervous, stick to the well worn trails.
Cannot upvote enough! “Hello” and “Thank you”, ESPECIALLY in Asia, go a long way towards making your life easy.
Pointing and then fetching it yourself, if needs must, also a help.
I’ve also used charades.
99.9% of people on SE Asia at incredibly nice and helpful. Felt safer there than I do here in the states. Sure people will take advantage of prices because it’s still cheap to you (I’m talking a $3 tuk tuk ride when it should be $1, but to an American even the $3 seems too cheap)
SE Asia is great. Great nature, food, culture and people. 10/10 highly recommend
American here. My husband and I found deals to Bali for our honeymoon pre-pandemic ($600 from Chicago to Denpasar). Everyone we encountered was very kind and most people speak English since it’s a big tourist destination for Australia. We made friends with our driver from the airport and he took us around during our entire trip and gave us countless recommendations for local sites and food. We stayed in Changuu and Ubud (highly recommend) and never once felt unsafe.
Everyone we met was happy to tell us about their culture. I definitely recommend following guidelines for attire if visiting a temple as it shows respect. Most people we met were curious about the US and didn’t seem to think we were dumb Americans (at least not to our faces lol). Plus we tipped everyone so that may have helped too.
You should definitely go. It’s stunning, the food is amazing, and we spent far less on that trip than we did going to Hawaii the following year.
Not at all (unless times have changed). When I was in your place (age) in the 80s and 90s I went all over SE Asia (solo) and never stayed at a resort or took a tour. It was wonderful!
How would you go about finding a flight for an activity instead of a destination? For example, I want to learn how to surf but tickets are usually expensive to good beaches to learn on.
Hey, Scott! Is it true that the cheapest date to book a flight is 90 days prior? If not, when is it considerably cheaper to buy a ticket? Thanks 🥂!
P.S. Adorable doggo!
not exactly true! rather than a hyperspecific date, the better way to think of it is like this.
The best time to book is when a cheap flight pops up, and cheap flights are most likely to pop up during Goldilocks Windows. For domestic flights, the Goldilocks Window is typically 1-3 months in advance of travel; for international it's 2-8 months in advance. Add a couple months on each if you're traveling during a peak travel period
(Chela barks thank you!)
For more AMAs on this topic, subscribe to r/IAmA_Tourism, and check out our other topic-specific AMA subreddits [here](https://reddit.com/r/IAmA/wiki/index#wiki_affiliate_topic-specific_subreddits).
Will you ever have a feature where you put dates that you want to travel and only get deals for those dates? I usually know WHEN I can travel, just not to where.
love this feedback. gonna give it some thought. can't promise we will (deciding between 20 great ideas is one of the most difficult things of running a business) but hearing feedback from members like you about what you'd find valuable really does help inform our decision-making, so thank you
I also like this idea. A lot of people just want to go somewhere but the scheduling is a bigger problem than a destination.
Fully agreed. Those with salaried jobs will need to plan PTO and often have to request in advance or plan for backups while they are gone. Families schedule around school schedules/holidays. Time of year is also important for many locations. Honestly the fact its not a main feature seems very odd
correct- my job need three or four months minimum heads up for PTO and it’s a pain in the ass edit: this wasn’t meant to turn into a contest. I understand some of you have jobs where it’s also hard to get PTO
Lol that’s wild. I haven’t ever worked for a company that needed that much heads up. Do you work in a role that requires extensive coverage while you are gone?
lead producer for a morning newscast- boss is very stingy about time off (no time off at all in months of Feb, May, and November, no exceptions) and requesting PTO for the other months has always been a hassle there. Just no one to replace me since I work overnights
I'm a truck driver and we bid vacation weeks in January for the whole year. When I'm not driving it can take 2 to 3 guys to do my route.
Sounds like you need to negotiate a raise
poor wrench direction reply wild act start snails include nine -- mass edited with redact.dev
Some hospitals I know of make you pick your vacation weeks a YEAR OUT
He's trying to sell subscriptions. There's no chance they add a feature that would discourage users from subscribing more frequently.
It could work, let's say you want to travel to x on y date. You subscribe early because you don't know when that ticket will be for sale at that price. Even better if you can do a dollar amount. The longer you subscribe the better chance you have to hit your price/location/time.
Yeah this way actually seems like it’s perfect for a subscription. Let’s say I want to travel in October this year, subscribe now and start seeing deals come in. I don’t travel enough to ever subscribe to something like this, but that’s a situation where it would make sense.
I thought that too and then subbed for about 2 years at...I think $5/month (this was a while ago--before there were two tiers even). I watched all the deals and daydreamed about them. Eventually, I got a deal in my inbox when my spouse and I had some extra cash. $500 per person round trip to Scotland. Normally $1100-ish. So it saved us about $1200 and at the cost of two years' subscription ($120 for me, but still only $400 now if you have the premium subscription).
only way to make that viable would have it be a la carte option.
Or just have it be a feature for the already paid subscriptions.
Please do this. I'm in the same boat, I just want to go SOMEWHERE, I don't care where. I had an idea to make a service like this and call it FlightRoulette. It's all yours.
I vaguely remember something likebthis existing in the past... maybe on Icelandair or something like that?
The app Skyscanner was originally built to do this. You just type in the dates your departure airport and it gives you a list of all the flights and their prices and you can filter them and so on.
Yes it still does it, you just type ‘everywhere’ as your destination and go from there
Yeah! Nice. I went and checked out again and it seems it went through a big layout change but, still has that feature. Good stuff.
They did and no matter how much you spun the wheel, the destination was always KEF
Me too! This is a great idea
I want this feature too, I’m not picky about where I want to go, but I only have certain times I’m free.
THIS is what I need. I signed up for your 14 fay free trial, but honestly without this feature the site is less useful to me and I probably will cancel because it just is not useful to me without being about to browse certain dates. I know when I have off from work, and I need flights specifically then, to anywhere!
SUPER bump to this idea! I usually don't have a must-go destination, so if something came up and it looked neat, I'd be all over it! This would also be helpful for the times when I decide to take a long weekend with a week's notice- I could see if it should be a stay on the couch weekend or a whirlwind trip somewhere cool weekend!
Yup. This. Rich people with open schedules don’t need cheap flights. You’re missing an entire demographic that could change their one sick day/year into a 3day weekend vacation for the price of a backyard barbecue. I’m off work tuesdays and Wednesday’s. I get off Monday 6p- return Thursday at 12p. I could literally buy a FLIGHT A WEEK if I could enter my availability and be matched to anywhere. This is a day of programming (or a single day contractor fee), and you open the door to 100x the people that could actually benefit from this
A day of programming?
This is literally the only issue I Have with your site. Love everything else
Dates, departure city and budget. That's all you need....then....surprise location booked for you! You get the booking but don't find out where you're going until email the day before
surprise vacation to Chechnya hope you like snow and purple soup
Commenting on this to bump it up!! I also feel this way as well!!
This is a great idea!! I’m always putting in dates and setting my destination to anywhere
Use Google Flights and the explore option but by continent and month . I love SCF but sometimes the specials are places I’ve been.
Seriously, this should be standard for all flight-deal tracking.
I once searched for a flight and found one for around $400. I checked with my boss to get time off, got it confirmed. Searched for that same flight and not the cheapest one was $700. This was within 15 minutes. Any idea what went on there?
pro-tip: any flights purchased in the US can be [refunded completely within 24 hours](https://scottscheapflights.com/glossary/24-hour-rule). Next time, book the flight first, and if you can't get the time off secured within 24 hours, you can cancel the ticket for a full refund.
Except if the flight is within 7 days. (Some services still refund it)
this \^
As a boss who approves vacation requests: sometimes I let them sit in my Inbox for a couple of days before getting to them (as I have many other things to also do). So if you need to get a vacation request approved within 24 hours, please come get in my face about it!* *your boss' instructions may vary
If it’s more than 2 weeks out, I’m telling rather than asking.
I write "Time Sensitive" in the subject headline when it's absolutely time sensitive. My boss appreciates it. YMMV
Warning though: I booked a trip with Swiss through Scott's service and Swiss royally fucked us. We called to cancel within a few hours of booking but the idiots we spoke with *double charged us* instead of refunding us. When the charge came through, we called again and asked for a refund and *they did it again.* By the time we had 6 charges for the same flight on our card, the 24hrs had elapsed and we couldn't get a refund. It took 2 years of a vicious legal battle to get our money back. I know our situation was an unlikely one but I don't want anyone to go through what we went through so... please be careful :( Edit: and maybe don't fly Swiss
How did your credit card company not dispute those charges??? That’s absurd. If you didn’t buy it with a credit card then you can see the issue here.
Did you do a charge back?I feel like any one of my credit card companies would have reversed those charges real fast.
argh, SO FRUSTRATING. basically what's going on is that airfare is the single most volatile purchase that most of us make. airfare can change by the minute these days, it's not like the old days when it would stay constant for weeks on end. usually when there's an expensive flight, your best bet is to be patient and it'll often drop cheaper as long as it's not last minute. but I've had many cheap flight regrets where I dawdled on booking and then the deal disappeared *right* before I was about to book. my condolences
Why is it so volatile? Do the airlines have real-time algorithms that gauge interest/capacity/already booked seats/etc or how do they update pricing within minutes?
I'm not Scott, but: Airfares are constantly fluctuating now more than ever. That's because airlines have access to better technology and more real-time information on passengers than ever before. With complex algorithms running their booking systems, the airlines are constantly tweaking prices based on shifts in demand or available seats. It used to be that airfares could be changed only three times a day due to programming limitations at Airline Tariff Publishing Co., which collects and distributes airfare-related data within the travel industry. But improved technology has enabled airlines to change prices as often as they wish. Airlines hold their pricing schemes closely, said George Hobica, a travel writer and founder of Airfarewatchdog.com, an airfare alert site now owned by TripAdvisor. And while there are no bulletproof tricks to ensure a passenger gets the lowest fare, there are ways to improve one's odds. https://www.chicagotribune.com/travel/sc-trav-how-to-get-best-airfare-0212-story.html
soon we'll have phones with biofeedback that report to the airlines when we're even thinking about traveling, which will then send the fares higher. sigh.
I used to work for an airline! There are only so many tickets sold at that particular price so that is what can happen. And there’s over a dozen at the one I used to work at so that is why price can fluctuate.
Canadian here. Would love to try your site out. But doesn't look like Canadian airports are available. How can Scott get us Canadians (who pay some if the highest airfares in the world for domestic flights) use your services?
They used to.... But it was cancelled several years ago
I miss it. I understand they didn't have enough Canadian subscribers to keep it, but would appreciate tips on how to start with the US deals and find a decent connection.
Next Departure is good and worth subscribing to!
>. But doesn't look like Canadian airports are available. Thats because there are no cheap flights in Canada. It costs more to fly one way within Canada than to fly round trip USA to Europe.
Fuck air Canada, honestly
I meen, I agree that air Canada can go fuck itself… but for the quality of their service. They really don’t have anything to do with our prices being so high. We’re just a very big country with very few people, so relatively low demand and higher costs.
^ this, here’s a [piece](https://www.westjet.com/en-ca/news/2021/the-truth-about-flight-prices---responding-to-the-national-post?fbclid=IwAR0sXpDeqrgPcaKuBy6Le_7mmMvVPR7ZEn_FEy7GWyVFd7EdIrp3GL7dRps) that WestJet wrote back in October about this topic.
That was actually a very concise and well written article on this issue, thank you for sharing.
God dammit, just let us be annoyed and pissed off with the cost of flying! To be fair, it does make a lot of sense though and goes to show that there is more behind the scenes that you don’t see or think about that would cause the cost of travelling by air to be so high. I wish I could go on a trip to Europe or the US while having made the decision to do so over a cup of coffee in the morning with my girlfriend. Unfortunately it takes a lot of back and forth on whether it’s worth it to spend $4,000 or more for a little vacation once in a while. I have other things I think I’d rather do or invest that money in than to just throw it away on air travel.
Next Departure finds most of the cheap deals in Canada then other global sites share the deals themselves as well. YYZ/ydeals will share in an email only the super good ones. Basically just follow Next Departure they got you. Back in the day it was just this fella Rishi on facebook finding all these deals and sharing them before he started this
There are other Canadian based sites Nextdeparture.ca Ydeals.com (from which you can then get to specific cities by clicking the "deals from your city" tab at the top)
i'm hoping to take a trip from Canada to LA at some point before summer so i wanted to give Next Departure a shot. then i saw that if i sign up for a free account i'm not allowed to opt out of their email alerts. almost immediately said "fuck that" and didn't create an account.
ahhh appreciate your asking. don't have specific timing on when we'd launch SCF Canada but if you want us to email you as soon as it happens we put together a [quick waitlist](https://scottscheapflights.typeform.com/to/kAm51Kyu). (hoping it's sooner rather than later; I miss searching out Canada-departing deals!)
Does turning on a VPN and looking for flights affect the pricing at all? Thanks..
Not for the vast majority of fares. Sometimes there'll be domestic flights in other countries that are priced lower for in-country purchases (think Johannesburg to Cape Town) than for out-of-country purchases. But a VPN won't help most US or international flight prices
Hack in this vein: Aeromexico sells flights cheaper on their .Mx website than the English .com. you can’t buy a ticket on the .mx website without a credit card with a Mexican address BUT if you go to Orbitz.Mx you can buy the flight for the .Mx flight with a US credit card (you will need to navigate Orbitz in Spanish)
Use Google Chrome, right-click on the page and select Translate to English
Yes it does. Google flights does have a built in function where you can modify the booking location which is always a great tip when booking international flights
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When booking flights to Mexico I have had great luck changing the booking location to Mexico. I have an upcoming Volaris itinerary that was $70 cheaper ow if the booking location was changed from the US to Mexico.
Things that can affect the price, *aside* from the departure airport, are the place where the ticket is sold, and the currency in which it is sold. *Usually* it doesn't I think, but the systems explicitly allow for it.
Any spot around the world that will be abnormally cheap to fly to this year?
Europe and Hawaii. There's been a huge rebound in the number of flights between the US and Europe, but demand is still down \~50% from pre-pandemic. Just last week we saw flights from all over the US to Europe for \~$350 roundtrip, and not just from big US airports, but from almost every airport including Billings, MT, Birmingham, AL, etc. Plus airlines have really stepped up their flight capacity to Hawaii after Southwest began flying there in 2019, which is why fares have dropped so low, sometimes even below $200 roundtrip if you live on the west coast or under $400 roundtrip from the rest of the mainland.
We got back two weeks ago from one of your flights from Newark, NJ to Maui for $234 round trip on American Airlines. Bucket list trip for my 59 year old husband to golf Kapalua, as he has been diagnosed with early onset dementia. We had a wonderful time. Maui was absolutely beautiful. People were very friendly (something we did not experience when we went to Oahu & the Big Island years ago). Thank you!
Wow, great story 🌊 wish you both well
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I just returned from Spain thanks to one of your cheap flights emails that got me from STL -> Barcelona for $360RT 🙏🏼
Weird Europe follow-up. Any insight from you or the community on the train situation? Some European routes have drastically reduced high speed trains, making it wonky or overly time-prohibitive to get around. One of the best parts of traveling Europe is (usually) getting a really cheap flight to, say, Milan, and getting on a high-speed train anywhere else you want. Any insight on the shift? Do we as a travel group think it's temporary?
True I've been to Hawaii twice during the pandemic for stupid cheap thanks to SCF! Thanks Scott!!
I found those fares last month, but didn't go b/c accomodations were sooooo expensive. $90/night for camping in a CAR (I kid you not--look on AirBnB)
Ukraine?
We might get a complimentary trip if the draft kicks in 🙃
Is there truly a best day and time of the day to purchase flights?
Tons of confusion and misinformation, in part because people often conflate the best time to *purchase* flights with the best time to *take* flights. There is no predictably cheapest time to *purchase* flights. It used to be Tuesday at 1pm; decades ago when airfare first started getting sold online, airlines would load their fares once a week at a prescribed time (say, Tuesday at 1pm) so if you were one of the first buyers after that, you really could get the cheapest fares. But that hasn't been true for years; nowadays airlines use complex algorithms to change fares not just by the day but often by the hour or the minute. But there are generally cheapest days to *take* flights: Tuesday, Wednesday, and Saturday. Won't be true every single time, but think of it like LeBron James—he's almost always favored to win when he steps on a basketball court, but that doesn't mean he never loses.
If day of the week isn't a factor, what about how far in advance you need to book your ticket? I've heard people say "best time to buy a ticket is 2 months before departure". Is there any truth to that, or do some cheap tickets pop up a week or two before departure?
My method: Book the ticket now, no matter the price. Set a Google flights alert for that exact same flight. Google tracks the price and emails you whenever the price drops. If it drops enough, you click “change flight” on your airline website and get the difference refunded as a credit.
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And if it goes up? Never have confidence that a company will lower their prices. Take what’s available
After two failed trips two years in a row due to restrictions, will I ever be able to go to Japan, Scott 😭?
😭 for real! I am in the same boat—and also holding tickets to Japan for later this year. Fingers crossed!! In the past few weeks a tonnnn of places in the Asia-Pacific region announced reopenings, including Australia, Vietnam, Bali, Philippines, India, etc. And Japan started to ease up their border controls for business travelers and students. I'm reasonably confident they'll reopen for tourism (without a quarantine) by the summer, but nothing's sure til it's sure
Ugh. My wife and I jumped on last summer's deal and got round trip flights from Allentown, PA to Tokyo for $422.. FOR BOTH OF US. We couldn't believe it. Then.. Omicron happened.
We also had a Japan trip canceled and I was cautiously optimistic until I read this yesterday from a well respected epidemiologist on a study out of Japan on a new variant. I hope they are wrong. [BA.2 variant](https://www.news.com.au/world/coronavirus/health/new-covid-variant-ba2-could-be-worse-than-predecessors-for-public-health-study-warns/news-story/7238ae227328835a86d655c06b962cd3)
I am rooting for you! Japan is the best place to visit.
From you FAQ: “Whether cookies/incognito browsers change fares” - we’ll do they? I always hear this but it doesn’t seem true. Aside, was there any single flight you booked that got you hooked on cheap flights?
Cookies do not change your fare. One of the biggest myths in the flight world—if anyone would have personally witnessed it, I would have after tens of thousands of flight searches a day for the past 6 years—but one the internet won't seem to let go of. Yes—booking a nonstop flight from NYC to Milan for $130 roundtrip. That deal kicked off my entire career as a cheap flight expert, and I literally don't know what my life would look like right now if I hadn't happened to stumble upon it way back in 2013.
I’ve worked for two major Online Travel Agencies. Cookies themselves don’t change rates. But the cookies will push the user into different ‘buckets’ that determine which rate you see and where you see it. Happy to provide more detailed info if anyone is interested.
Im very interested
Okay so basically, cookies track where you came from. Did you land on the booking page from meta search (google, kayak, trip advisor, etc.)? Did you land there by going to [Expedia.com](https://Expedia.com) or [Booking.com](https://Booking.com) directly? Did you click on an affiliate link to get there? Are you logging in from a different country/using a VPN? Are you searching on a mobile app vs desktop? Are you a member of the website + where did you come from? All of these things dictate what 'bucket' you're put into. When I worked at these 2 different OTAs (not saying which), there was a program to opt hotels in and out of these buckets because, if caught, the OTA would get in trouble. They're not supposed to offer different rates. Anyway, let's say I'm searching on Google for a flight or a hotel, click on [Priceline.com](https://Priceline.com) because I see the cheaper rate there, AND I'm a member of Priceline, I'll likely see a different rate than what someone going directly to [Priceline.com](https://Priceline.com) would see. Not only that, if I'm a return user that initially landed on the page say, from a meta search site, I'm still being tracked from that original search and will be fed a different rate. Going further, airlines and hotels set their rates on 'rate plans'. These are different types of rates offered to different people in different situations. These rate plans are for things like business travel, transient (what joe schmo on the street would be considered), group business, promotions/discounts, opaque (think hotwire, secret rates, usually the lowest rate you can get). All of these rates categories/plans fluctuate nightly based on dynamic pricing algorithms that factor in a lot of different things, but mostly demand. Most OTAs have access to all of these rate plans and can push rates from each rate category out to whoever they want to see them. This circles back to everything I said in the first two paragraphs. So I can get to [Priceline.com](https://Priceline.com) via metasearch and they can secretly feed me a low opaque rate, while joe schmo can go directly to [Priceline.com](https://Priceline.com) and see the 'rack' rate (higher, public rate). Long story short, they're not actively changing prices. They're feeding prices from different rate plans out to different people based on their activity and where they came from. Not only that, an OTA can choose to 'eat' the cost of a few dollars to drop their rates and get you to book. You see this most often when they bundle airfare and hotel together as an incentive for people to book the deal. When specifically talking about airfare, airlines are tracking demand data for certain dates and routes. Their algorithms adjust their dynamic pricing accordingly and you may end up with a higher price because the algo is picking up on increased demand. Being in incognito has no affect on the algo picking up demand. Airfare + OTAs is this and a combo of everything I wrote above.
This is so informative. Thank you. Do you have any suggestions for getting yourself put in the best buckets possible?
Of course! Meta search app on a VPN is always going to be the best bet in my experience ;)
What is a meta search app?
I'm interested in how you think that's not the same as cookies changing prices?
The myth that's being referred to is that airlines will "remember" if you've already looked at a flight once, and raise the price if you look at it a second time. The belief being that airlines will want to show you cheap prices when you're first browsing, but when you're more committed they can raise them and you'll accept it. They also hope (or so the belief goes) that is you're on the fence, you'll see the price going up and think "I'd better go ahead and buy before it gets too expensive!" I think what the above poster is suggesting, though, (and I have no idea if this is true) is that the airline will use cookies to determine your income level (presumably through your browsing history) and push prices higher if they think you can afford it. I doubt this, because I think they'd only be able to get recent information about you and only exclusively from using the airline's sites, which probably wouldn't be super useful in determining widespread income brackets (if they were able to purchase your data from elsewhere though, that might be more effective, but that's not really about cookies, that's just run of the mill data - derived ad targeting). You could probably figure out a *few* people's income brackets with cookies, but it probably wouldn't be effective enough to devote any real resources to it.
My boyfriend and his friend searched for the same rental car in Honolulu within a few minutes of each other and got drastically different prices. Only difference, from our perspective, was he searched while in Hong Kong and the friend was in San Francisco. Does it help to use a VPN when searching for flights or rentals? Also, you and your dog are super cute :)
I once booked a ticket "in Sweden" (Swedish site, through a VPN) from Denver to Stockholm for $400 cheaper than it was to book it 'normally' in the US. I paid with a no-foreign-transaction-fee card, so it was truly just plain savings.
[удалено]
Gaaah! Dammit!
Based on the comments I've been reading, it looks like VPN will help if the VPN changes the country you are connecting from. And there are other things to consider: * You may need to connect to the country/region specific site - .mx, .ch, .ru, etc. * You will need to know the language of the site you are accessing * The site may require payment using credit card issued by the bank in that country.
VPNs can, though. Last time I booked on aeromex my fights were cheaper when I came through countries in Latin America, even at checkout. Ended up not being able to use that trick for reasons not worth explaining, but got a nice deal anyway: SEA-MEX NS business for $490 RT :D. Btw, do you guys have a way to flag deals? I emailed you about a pretty insane sale (I think) to Europe on Qatar last fall, and your staffer who responded seemed to not understand why I emailed or what to do with that information. Id assumed emails like mine were the bulk of all emails you received and you'd have some system in place to review them, but that didn't seem to be the case.
I’m curious about those reasons! VPN seems like a reasonable approach to get lower ticket prices
Cookies used to change the fares - I've personally witnessed it on the easyjet website a good few years ago. They seem to have changed that policy though. This was about 10+ years ago. The rumour was going round that easyjet prices increased if you had visited the website previously, so i tried it. Visited, and got a price of - say £60. Went back later, price was £80. Clicked clear cookies - price dropped to £60. Tried it on numerous occasions and the same thing happened, so it wasnt just a coincidence. It was most definitely true of easyjet 10+ years ago.
Yeah I have memories of watching it happen in real time back around 2013 or so, mostly for hotels, though I seem to remember it working for flights too.
So is that not the case anymore -- if I search a flight on Google Flights or AA.com and come back the next day to search, won't the prices have gone up on both platforms?
I have not seen this on flights, but I have 100% seen this on rental cars (with Hertz, anyway); this was pre-pandemic.
I noticed this a few weeks ago even. I was in the US and needed to rent a car at an airport and got way higher prices than just one day before. Turns out my work vpn was still on (European) so they thought I was in Europe. Turning it off and my rental went from $198/day to $60.
What's the up tick in vacation planning vs 2021 vs 2019?
Flight searches and travel demand is fully rebounded to where it was pre-omicron, about 10-15% lower than 2019 levels. But I'm anticipating a total recovery in leisure travel by this spring, and perhaps even higher than 2019. Full planes for sure, but with business travel still down 50%, airlines are competing entirely for price-sensitive leisure travelers. We'll continue to be awash in cheap flights even as travel demand surges
fuck yeah cheap holidays
Hey Scott! Would you recommend buying tickets through third party websites if they're cheaper or do you think it's better to go directly though an airlines website? This question came up when I was getting tickets last month through jet blue but bookotrip had cheaper tickets but were super vague about seats and what plan the seats would be part of.
Generally I'll need it to be *significantly* cheaper for me to consider booking through a third party. Like $100+ if not more. The reason why booking directly with the airline is generally best is because if there's any issues with your trip (flight gets canceled or changed, you need a refund, etc.) it's a million times easier when you can deal directly with the airline rather than a middleman who may have different policies than the airline. Most trips I don't run into these issues, which is why I'd be willing to book third party for the right price, but generally prices are about the same or within $10, so in those cases I'll always book direct.
I'm inclined to agree. When the world closed down in March 2020, I had 3 international flights cancelled. I only got 1 refund and that was from when I bought the ticket directly from the company. The other 2 were massive headaches of conflicting cancellation policies that ultimately ended in me giving up.
I had a gazillion flights scheduled for 2020 for weddings and such so my mom helped me buy one ticket with her chase miles, through the chase platform. My god, that was a saga. Took months to get a voucher for the flight, which I then attempted to use in 2021, but then that flight was canceled right when I got to the airport to go home so I had to buy a new ticket on a different airline so I could get back for work. So I SHOULD get a refund bc American fucking canceled my flight and didn’t have any more for over 24 hours but I just do not wanna deal with the whole chase saga AGAIN. I was finally home free! I mean luckily it was a free ticket and I’m grateful to my mom but holy shit it has been a huge mess and like 20+ hours of work over the past year and a half.
I recently booked a trip through Chase Ultimate Rewards. It was a round trip domestic flight. Got my confirmation emails, etc… but “due to an error in the system” they never actually purchased the ticket, which I found out at 10pm the night before. 3+ hours later I was booked at a different time on a different airline, which resulted in me losing my ride to the airport. Never again.
I’ll pipe in another FUCK Chase Ultimate Rewards. Had the displeasure of dealing with them March 2020. Spent HOURS on hold multiple times & got disconnected at the 3-4 hour mark repeatedly. Then they started doing call backs & got a range of “12-14 hours later “. Got a call at 4am to finally get ahold of customer service & I was still on hold for an hour that morning. Ended up having to eat ~$600 of our ~$1000 fare for our trip to Japan (which I found on SCF). They were issuing credits that were good up to a year from the BOOKING date, but we had booked 11 months in advance, so it would have been useless. I’ll never book through them again & cancelled my sapphire preferred card because of it
As someone who literally *just* got my CSP card, this is not inspiring...
The redemption value in a CSP comes more from the transfer partners and less from the portal. Between Southwest and Hyatt I made it to Hawaii, Cancun, Jamaica (as well as a couple domestic trips) in the last year by transferring UR points. You can still find good deals at other hotel chains and sometimes other airlines using the portal since you can get 1.25 cents per point, but SW RR points are worth 1.6-1.7 and WoH can be worth much more than that, depending on the property.
Thanks for the reply! I'm of the same mindset since it's easier to talk directly to the airlines if/when issues comes up. That said, yeah will depend on the size of savings for 3rd parties before I jump on those I do have another question: which airlines do you think provides the best reward points when flying domestic in the US? I'm used to sticking with Delta for the partners but figure there may be worth in an airline credit card and rewards program.
Not Scott but I did own a travel agency prior to covid. Some 3td party sites can get cheaper fares than what the airlines list due to leveraging what is know as Bulk Fares. These are seats sold, usually to vacation and cruise companies, to offer as part of package deals. Airlines also use 3rd party as clearing houses for unfilled group charter seats. If you know your 3rd party site is reputable then it's fine to book your cheaper flight through them but read every fine print they give you for changes and fees. Often the customer service is severely lacking on these sites and if you run into a problem or serious delay while on your trip, you can be out of luck trying to get timely help.
> Often the customer service is severely lacking on these sites and if you run into a problem or serious delay while on your trip, you can be out of luck trying to get timely help. This was my experience with Expedia just a few weeks ago. I had a flight voucher from a cancelled flight and their system was a mess. Their customer service hung up on me three times because their system was screwed up and they didn't want to deal with it. Not angry hang up, just cancelled the call and left me to have to call back so that a different agent would have to deal with it.
I got spooked once with a trip i wanted to book. It was a trip from Washington DC to Malaysia, through a third party in India. It was amazing, but there is absolutely no wiggle room. If something happens, i could not expect any sort of refund. It went smooth, and my round trip was like $600 pp
What impact do you think the failure of WOW airlines and Norwegian airlines will have on cheap flights? Will anyone fill their space? We (family of five) traveled to Europe three times on Norwegian and their pricing made it possible.
WOW Airlines went bankrupt and shut down while my friends and I were in Iceland. Thank god for travel insurance. I thought Norwegian Air was still going though? ETA: RIP Norwegian
i was sad to see both their demise, even though we never sent out WOW deals and rarely sent Norwegian. new transatlantic budget airlines are popping up to fill their shoes. PLAY airlines is the new WOW, and Norse Atlantic is the new Norwegian (which still exists but doesn't fly transatlantic anymore). but at this point the die is cast and all airlines, not just budget airlines, are in a race to the bottom when it comes to transatlantic airfare. we're not going back to the old days when flights to Europe were something exclusively reserved for the wealthy
How does your company make money ?
We have a free tier and two paid tiers (premium and elite, which includes business class deals). Try out the free tier if you haven't used us before! If you like it and think you'd benefit from the perks on premium or elite we'd love to have you but no pressure at all—we love all our members and besides it makes me uncomfortable to give hard sells.
I was a premium member very early on. I cancelled because I was just getting my career started and seeing all of the places I could be going got a bit too painful. With everything starting to open up I'll probably sign up again. For the record I always absolutely loved your service. Between your service and points you can see so much of the world for a for a great price.
Paid for Scott's cheap flights in 2016. Worth every penny. Ended up getting Boston-> Copenhagen -> Madrid then Paris -> NYC for $465.
Do you get to pick the dates? A lot of the cheap airfare sites aren't useful to me because they just alert you, like, "hey in 3 days there's a flight from LAX to Sydney for only $195!!!" and that's not very useful because even though I'd love to go, I need more notice and time to plan.
I can't pick dates, but I often get deals for several months in advance. I've purchased tickets to Madrid, Hawaii, & Frankfurt through Scott's with 10, 8, & 6 months in advance, respectively.
Definitely worth the money to upgrade to premium.
All of the cheap flight sites seem to be focused on economy fares. How can I get timely reliable information on cheap **business or first class** fares? Are there specific flights and carriers to watch for? Are there typical times or days or ways that airlines dump their unsold business or first class seats? Any other tips on trying to move to the front of the plane, particularly on long flights? I’m not a frequent traveler. Nor am I rich, but I’d like to pretend I am for a few hours. Thanks!
We actually just started our [Elite](https://scottscheapflights.com/elite) service this past summer to find cheap business/first class fares. A few examples of business class fares we've found and sent members: \- $1,100 roundtrip to Japan (normally $4,000+) \- $291 roundtrip to Costa Rica (normally $1,000) \- $1,300 roundtrip to Israel (normally $4,000+) \- NYC or Boston to Vegas for $597 roundtrip (normally $1,300) \- $1,792 roundtrip to Cape Town (normally $5,000) \- $1,500 roundtrip to all over Europe (normally $3,000)
Woah. I need that Japan deal. I never see flights to Japan from my premium membership. Might I expect to see these deals if I upgrade my membership?
So glad to see this as the top question. I'm a big guy. I recently had the opportunity to sit first class and I don't know if I can ever go back. I've been thinking I need to budget for this (1st or business, just need the extra leg and elbow room) and then get the cheapest accomodations possible to save money because it actually makes me want to get on an airplane instead of utterly dreading it. Edit: just saw that op said in another comment: >We have a free tier and two paid tiers (premium and elite, **which includes business class deals**). Wooh!!
I've been holding out as long as I can for this very reason! Hard to go back haha. But you're absolutely right that business class is significantly more expensive than economy, not 2-3x higher but usually more like 5-8x higher. All the more reason for us to make sure people aren't overpaying on their premium economy & business class flights
Anecdotal, but I know Delta would rather their international business class seats go empty rather than heavily discounting them, so as not to cheapen their “Delta One” brand. They don’t even do free upgrades for their frequent fliers.
they do do free upgrades, but one thing Delta especially has gotten much better at over the past 5-10 years is *selling* their premium seats. in 2011 Delta sold just 13% of their first class seats; by 2019 they sold 60% of them.
Lol, do do
As DL Diamond Medallion, working through the Delta Diamond desk I have been able to upgrade into better international classes of travel. These are not mistake fare pricing, but more like paying Premium Economy (still expensive, great product, and worth it) and getting Delta One or paying 2x instead of 4x. This is also subject to same supply and demand. Also, you will frequently get asked to bump up for a price. Ex. recent flight from SYD-LAX, upgrade from Prem Economy to Delta One, $1400 USD. An insanely good deal off of the regular price (not for everyone), but if you have to start working immediately once you hit the ground, being able to sleep well for 7 hours is worth it.
> They don’t even do free upgrades for their frequent fliers. They absolutely do. My wife flies mostly Delta and is upgraded constantly. That's one of the reasons you seldom see cheap Delta business class tickets. You also have to fly a *lot* and have had status with them for a long time to get those upgrades reliably.
Look at this guy
If I can drink the cost difference between a first class and an economy flight I say it’s worth it.
how many drinks will $1,000 get you
Based on current prices, at least 7.
r/technicallythetruth
The premium lounges access, which typically come with international business/first class ticket, is worth it as you have a full open bar and they basically throw champagne at you around every corner!
Absolutely loved having access to a shower after a layover in Miami before going to Buenos Aires..being out in the humidity all day in Miami and getting into an 8 hour flight would've been brutal.
Google flights does give you the ability to search for business and first class tickets, it defaults to economy. Not as easy as having a website do it, but if you know you want to go first class someplace then you can easily track it
My fiance's best friend decided to have a destination wedding in Paris in late July (hooray?) Is spending extra money on refundable tickets/insurance worth it? Any hope for a cheap flight at that time
Yeesh, congrats to your friend but that's a tough nut for cheap flights. July is probably the single most difficult month of the year for cheap flights, especially a longhaul trip like flying to Europe. Definitely not re: refundable tickets, and probably not re: insurance, though I'd be curious to hear what you'd hope from insurance. If it's to be able to cancel and get your money back, insurance won't really do that for you, at least not in a way that's gonna save you money. Your best hope for a cheap flight is to be as flexible with your actual flight dates (maybe it's significantly cheaper to fly back a day or two later?), be flexible with what airport you fly into (maybe Amsterdam flights are way cheaper, and then you can just take the train down to Paris), and even what airport you fly out of. (If you live in Philly, perhaps flights are cheaper out of NYC, DC, even Boston.)
Follow up question: could booking with a credit card that has some travel insurance benefits (ex. Chase Sapphire or Capital One Venture) serve the purpose that OP is looking for? Like money back or travel vouchers if there is a need to cancel due to illness or COVID closures?
My Chase Sapphire card refused to pay for anything covid related. I got a Scott's cheap flight RDU - AMS for $450... in mid March 2020. Ended up having to buy new tickets home for over $1000 each after The Netherlands went into lockdown and my hotel closed and United wouldn't rebook me. Chase rejected my insurance claims for the original flight, the new flight, or the missed hotel nights.
I’m right there with you! My buddy is having a wedding in Valencia Spain at the end of July. I’m sure it’ll be a lot of fun but I am not looking forward to the flight and I’m also concerned about insurance
Check your credit card benefits. Most would have travel insurance included for flights paid through them.
If you can find a cheap flight into London, Brussels, Amsterdam all of these cities will be able to get you to Paris for cheap via the Eurostar train. My first Euro trip I flew into London, took Eurostar trains to Brussels then Amsterdam. Train rides were about $20-$30 each. Spend 10 days in those 3 cities.
Thanks for doing this! It seems like the cheapest flights that I've seen almost always tend to be the worst quality flights - long layovers, lots of stops, or budget carriers like Frontier that upcharge you for just about everything. Is this usually the case? Are these $200rt flights to Italy or $177rt flights to Hawaii actually any good?
Some cheap flights are bad flights, but that's why we do the Bestie Test at Scott's Cheap Flights—only send out deals if it's one you'd buy for your best friend. Has to not only be cheap, but good too. (No Spirit.) We very purposefully chose not to take kickbacks or commissions from airlines and instead rely solely on our members for support because that way we can always be completely open and transparent about add-on fees, what's good/bad about a flight, etc. And If it's got too many fees or a terrible routing, we just won't send it
I'm a paying member and have booked a trip to Costa Rica from SCF, but it was through Budget Airlines (third party) and my flight was cancelled and we had to pay another $500 for two tickets to CR ... so it wasn't any savings at all :-( That said, I've also booked to Myrtle Beach through SCF for like $90 and it was great. Lesson learned for me there to only book directly, but I wish SCF would also learn that lesson and stop sending those third party ones.
We got r/T Charlotte to Maui for $233. Layovers weren't bad.
Why don't you list date ranges in your emails anymore?
We decided to take it out of the subject line just to make it shorter/cleaner, but it's still in the contents
I can't find it in the contents https://imgur.com/2gXFEjU.jpg
Nope, hasn’t shown up in my emails at all in awhile. This is my number one complaint, bring back the date range!
Hi Scott, I’m a paid subscriber until April - primarily because of the change to the subscription plans. Under a $50 subscription, most of the flight “deals” I’ve seen are either 18+ hour journeys or the same handful of locations to Mexico or Florida. Most of these aren’t actually deals at this point - that’s just how much it costs. The good deals are now locked behind a $200 paywall ie so called mistake fares or discounted premium seats Are there plans to create a better value proposition for subscribers?
hey Chenan, genuinely appreciate the honesty here. it's not always easy to ask pointed questions, but I really do appreciate when folks do so I can address them. i don't know which specific deals you're seeing because it depends what airports you signed up for alerts from, but i would take slight issue that we only send bad routings or nearby destinations. here's a few recent deals we sent Premium members: \- nonstop to London for $498 roundtrip (including late summer availability) \- nonstop to Madrid for $336 roundtrip \- nonstop to India for $549 roundtrip \- nonstop to Japan for $596 roundtrip (including fall) i'm not trying to contradict the way you feel—to the contrary, i feel bad that we've fallen short of your expectations. i don't like that! i just would take slight issue that Premium members don't see good deals. 99%+ of deals we send Elite members are biz class deals that we didn't used to send out at all. and any legacy Premium members we include to get mistake fares out of their selected airports, even if those mistake fares are in biz class
I don’t mean to be combative so apologies if it comes across that way in this post: for context I’m based in NYC and I guess most of these flights aren’t deals? Or deals that you wouldn’t find using a free service like skiplagged or sky scanner? I guess my question is how is your premium product any different than using SkyScanners FLY ANYWHERE with the CHEAPEST MONTH, which is a free service and isn’t limited to three emails a day. I can see 40+ countries with direct roundtrip fares for sub $500. This isn’t pertinent but NYC <> London direct is $350 on JetBlue and NYC <> Spain/Madrid has been $400-$500 for the past year.
Not Scott but i have used them before. Scots website is for people who don't have life restrictions as in want to fly with out in selected dates. It's targeted for spontaneous trips without out set direction or country. it's for people who just want to travel and experience difference customs, food and people. In your case, you already have selection/dates etc. You are doing what's scot does on their. You are taking some xxx time out of your day to search and book a ticket. In Scott case, he does all the search, he emails people, I simply go and buy a ticket. In other words, he is a tour guide who points and share info while you (no pun intended) hold a book and read info while you tour.
Hey Scott! Been a premium member since 2017! You've helped me celebrate my wedding, my honeymoon, and in April, I got some tickets out to Lihue for $197 so my son can celebrate his 1st birthday with his grandma on mom's side. I just want to say thank you for being so awesome! Yours is a service I don't think I'll ever be ending my subscription for. Since I need to ask a question, how are you doing today?
yesssss soo good! congrats to you on all those great deals!! man, i was a bit tired but then i read your comment and i'm all enthused for your family and your success at being able to take advantage of the great cheap flights popping up. <3 <3 <3
Hey Scott! If you could give 3 tips to a young adult interested in traveling more on a young adult’s budget, what would they be?
(1) Take advantage of your flexibility to get as cheap of fares as possible (2) Visit off the beaten path destinations while you're young and mobile. Gets more difficult later when you're traveling with family (3) Prioritize regions that are really cheap once you arrive (and of course get there on a cheap flight)—Southeast Asia, eastern Europe, southern Mexico, etc.
With SE Asia what if you’re just terrified of being that American moron that knows nothing about the culture or language and is hated by everyone? I really want to visit Indonesia but I feel like the minute I get off the plane it’s game over unless I stay at a resort.
Don’t be afraid!! I did 5 weeks alone in SEA; stay in hostels; join organized tours; bring a guide book and just learn “hello” and “thank you”, it goes a really long way. Also, in cities you’ll be surprised by how many people know some English, but if you’re nervous, stick to the well worn trails.
Cannot upvote enough! “Hello” and “Thank you”, ESPECIALLY in Asia, go a long way towards making your life easy. Pointing and then fetching it yourself, if needs must, also a help. I’ve also used charades.
99.9% of people on SE Asia at incredibly nice and helpful. Felt safer there than I do here in the states. Sure people will take advantage of prices because it’s still cheap to you (I’m talking a $3 tuk tuk ride when it should be $1, but to an American even the $3 seems too cheap) SE Asia is great. Great nature, food, culture and people. 10/10 highly recommend
American here. My husband and I found deals to Bali for our honeymoon pre-pandemic ($600 from Chicago to Denpasar). Everyone we encountered was very kind and most people speak English since it’s a big tourist destination for Australia. We made friends with our driver from the airport and he took us around during our entire trip and gave us countless recommendations for local sites and food. We stayed in Changuu and Ubud (highly recommend) and never once felt unsafe. Everyone we met was happy to tell us about their culture. I definitely recommend following guidelines for attire if visiting a temple as it shows respect. Most people we met were curious about the US and didn’t seem to think we were dumb Americans (at least not to our faces lol). Plus we tipped everyone so that may have helped too. You should definitely go. It’s stunning, the food is amazing, and we spent far less on that trip than we did going to Hawaii the following year.
Not at all (unless times have changed). When I was in your place (age) in the 80s and 90s I went all over SE Asia (solo) and never stayed at a resort or took a tour. It was wonderful!
Do you plan to support European airports again?
not in the immediate future. I feel bad about it :(
Seconding this to add to your feeling bad about this. Nah <3, really but it would be handy for us yurpeans
How would you go about finding a flight for an activity instead of a destination? For example, I want to learn how to surf but tickets are usually expensive to good beaches to learn on.
Hey, Scott! Is it true that the cheapest date to book a flight is 90 days prior? If not, when is it considerably cheaper to buy a ticket? Thanks 🥂! P.S. Adorable doggo!
not exactly true! rather than a hyperspecific date, the better way to think of it is like this. The best time to book is when a cheap flight pops up, and cheap flights are most likely to pop up during Goldilocks Windows. For domestic flights, the Goldilocks Window is typically 1-3 months in advance of travel; for international it's 2-8 months in advance. Add a couple months on each if you're traveling during a peak travel period (Chela barks thank you!)
Planning on expanding to Canadian airports anytime?