When you are in an airport, do you ever take a few moments to just look at the departures and arrivals information boards? I generally have my gate information on my phone, but I still like to take a few minutes and just embrace my wanderlust. Especially when I'm in large international hub airports, it's like the board is just taunting me with a 'choose your adventure'. From this one place that I am standing, I could pick a door and it would take me to any corner of the earth within a day. Amazing!
I didn't think I could write an entire post on 'how to book your flight', I think most people can book a flight nowadays without visiting their local AAA. However, there are some things that I think are worth sharing to give you confidence and save money and headaches when booking international tickets.
Should you really fly with an international airline that you may have never heard of?
When it comes to picking an airline, I clearly tend to pick the airline that has the best deal and best flight path to get to where I want to go. One mental blocker I had to get over was this idea that flying the standard US-based airlines was some how safer and better and flying with an international carrier would be at best, a less quality experience and at worst, unsafe for my family.
After having flown numerous airlines overseas, I have to say, I have never had a worse experience than a US-based carrier and in fact, we have numerous better experiences. So lets look at it from a safety perspective and a comfort perspective.
On the safety side, according the FAA website, the US only directly inspects/monitors US carriers and other countries inspect/monitor their own country's carriers. However, there is an international set of standards which all countries are then measured against to see if they adhere to the same standards the US abides by. The only countries that fall beneath the mark are Russia, Venezuela, Bangladesh, Thailand and 'Organization of Eastern Caribbean States'. All other countries have the same level of safety standards in place as the US. Bottom line, if you're nervous, do research.
From a comfort perspective, the US airlines are never at the top of the list. Flying economy, the best rated airlines are typically Qatar, Singapore and Emirates. Japan Airlines jumped to the top in this recent evaluation. How did our US-based airlines do? Delta was the only one to make the list, coming in the last available slot at 20th place. Impressive, right?
In our recent trip to South East Asia, we saw the quality/comfort difference very starkly. I had booked Qatar Airways for the entirety of the trip, however, a month or so before the trip, the first leg of the journey got rebooked as an American Airline operated flight and the second leg remained Qatar Airways. I was incredibly disappointed, I knew AA wasn't going to stack up. I had booked Qatar because I wanted to sleep and be comfortable for these long haul flights. In the end, everything about the Qatar flight was better than the American flight. The ambiance of the plane, the professionalism of the service, the bathroom cleanliness, the seat angle of decline, the food quality, the timing and quantity of food, the space between the seats - all spot on - and they even had gift packets for the kids. On the American Airlines flight, the flight attendants were arguing with each other, they didn't hand out water often and it was uncomfortable interrupt their bickering in the prep area to ask for more water and they ran out of food choices twice for those of us towards the back of the plane. It was just all the little things that add up to less of a nice experience. These top international airlines prioritize creating a comfortable experience for their passengers and it shows. All of this to say, don't shy away from international airlines, and I run towards them!
Practical Lessons Learned from booking our International Air Travel.
In the first post in this series, we looked at how to find a destination. In order to seal the deal, you need to book the flight. Here are several tricks and rules of thumb that we use when booking.
Always book directly with the airline.
This is number one. I think everyone already knows this, but in case you don't, let me say it again. Always book directly with the airline. The reason is that if you have a problem, it will become exponentially worse to course correct if you haven't booked directly with the airline. Sometimes third party sites offer a slight discount, but it's not worth the miniscule savings. If you have issues, you will need to call this third party, who has never had good customer service in our experience and likely will do even less for you than what the airline can do directly. Often times, they even strip you of some of the basic policies the airlines offer. When you buy through them, their purchasing rules apply.
Real life example: I had trouble booking on AirEgypt.com and decided just to book via Kiwi, breaking my #1 rule. As soon as I hit submit I realized I had entered the wrong date, by 1 day. I tried to cancel within 30 seconds of clicking 'buy'. There was even a button there to quick cancel. It didn't seem to be working so I called, but Kiwi said it was too late, I'd have to pay full price for another ticket. The airline itself has a 24 hour free cancellation policy for such situations though, so they'd cancel the first ticket and pocket the full fare as profit from the airline, but I had to pay full price according to their purchasing rules (less $10 a tickets). I was not about to do that. I'm fairly tech savvy and found a workaround that I'm sure wasn't intended on the Air Egypt website to change my flight for a $25 fee, bypassing Kiwi in the process. It messed up all the records in their systems and we were actually ticketed on both the flights. It was stressful though because although I had confirmation codes for us on the new flight, up until the time we were checked in at the airport, I didn't know if something was going to go wrong. Fortunately, it was a short, cheap, frequent flight so I was willing to gamble a bit with it. When we got to the airport in Cairo and checked in for our flight, I was ready for a glass of wine! Never would I count on a work around, I just would never use their site to begin with!
Sometimes the international (english) version of the website increases the cost of the flight.
It happens. Charge more for tourists, less for the local population. The world wide web enables this to happen online by directing tourists to websites based on our location. But you can usually detect it and work around it.
Real life example: I was booking a flight from Santiago, Chile to Punta Arenas on Latam Airlines, a Chilean airline. I had been looking at flight prices on Google and figured it was going to be about $100 per person for a round trip flight (which is 3 hours long, so very inexpensive). When I went to book it on Latam, it was showing as $300 per person. I was so angry at Google for misleading me! But then I started to dig around and noticed the URL was specifically for the US.
So within the website, I was able to change the language to Spanish and was directed to the Chilean site.
I did the same search, in Spanish, and there was that $100 price tag that Google had been showing me.
For the sake of proof, I just did a search for an upcoming flight on Latam to show a comparison - this was only a $28 dollar difference, not nearly as significant as when I was booking my flight a couple years ago, but there still was a price difference that is greater than normal currency fluctuations.
I know enough Spanish to navigate the site, but I did try to use the browser translate option to be confident in what I was selecting but it messed up several of the controls on the page, like the date controls, which made the site impossible to use. So I booked in Spanish. If I had to do the same in any other language, I may need to phone a friend! Or have two browsers open in different languages so you know which buttons to click. I don't know how common this situation is, but if you see that the Google price is different from what you are seeing on the airline website, it is a good place to start.
Sometimes the online purchase will be a foreign transaction, so know your credit card rules.
Especially if booking on a website with a URL which ends in the country code like above, it's likely the transaction will be a foreign transaction. We now only have credit cards which don't charge foreign transaction fees so I don't pay close attention to this, but if your bank/credit card does charge foreign transaction fees, you should be aware.
Additionally, this can sometimes set off fraud alerts as if someone in another country is trying to use your credit card. I've never called ahead to prevent this, just dealt with it if it does happen and I think maybe the fraud detection has gotten smarter over the years that it hasn't happened recently. Some of that may be because we have frequent international purchases though, so just be aware that it can happen but a quick phone call to your bank/credit card company usually fixes it.
Then there are other times when inexplicably our credit cards just won't work. Try again later.
Morale of the story, most of the time it's fine but there is potential to be annoyed, but it's still worth not booking on a third party site.
Often times, international carriers do not charge full price for young children.
How about this for another reason to book on an international airline? We've gotten 10-20% off for the kids from the full adult fare. I haven't done my own research to determine which airlines do this but this blog has a list based on their research. It's more of a nice surprise than something I've planned for! That blog also details out info on airlines which seat kids together with their parents even if you don't pay to select seats together. (I have almost always refused to pay to select seats together - it hasn't backfired on us ever.)
Direct is best but a Stay Over can be a nice bonus
We are generally always searching for a direct flight at the cheapest flight. But sometimes, direct just isn't an option. International airlines are getting better about making it easier for tourists to do a quick stop over in their international hubs. Adding a stop over at no additional charge is often available on their websites, sometimes it is more obvious than others, either by selecting specifically 'add a stay over' or booking a multi-destination flight which doesn't add extra cost by choosing their hub as the 'stop'. Also, these countries have generally made getting any visas easier, or not required, to boost tourism. Another site did more intensive research than I did with even more tips on how to string together one-way and multi-destination flights to create epic adventures without breaking the bank.
Airline | Hub/Stop Over | Consider when flying from the North East US to... |
COPA Airlines | Panama City, Panama | Central and South America |
Qatar Airways | Doha, Qatar | India, South East Asia |
Emirates | Dubai, UAE | India, South East Asia |
Turkish Airways | Istanbul, Turkey | Africa |
TAP Air Portugal | Lisbon, Portugal | Africa |
Singapore Airlines | Singapore | South East Europe |
Iberia Air | Madrid, Spain | Eastern Europe |
FinnAir | Helsinki, Finland | Eastern Europe |
Etihad Airline | Abu Dhabi, UAE | India, South East Asia |
Japan Airlines | Tokyo or Osaka, Japan | Asia, New Zealand |
Iceland Air | Keflavik, Iceland | Europe |
My Unsolicited Thoughts On Loyalty Programs
I am probably one of the most un-loyal airline customer. I'm just never willing to pay more to stick to one airline and build points - for work or personal travel. I have frequent flyer accounts with the 3 main US carriers which covers the 3 main alliances, Star Alliance, OneWorld, and SkyTeam. All of the international flights we have booked are generally in one of the alliances, which means I get points for the trips even if booking through the international carrier. I'm fairly convinced that if I had prioritized booking on one airline/alliance in the hopes of getting enough points for a free trip someday, I would have either never seen half the places that we have visited or I would have paid more than the one free trip would be worth. Not to mention the airlines are consistently changing the programs to make them a worse deal and people get really upset that they have invested so much in the program.
We have recently gotten the travel credit card which in theory can be used to transfer points to various airlines, therefore no need to be 'loyal'. We are still learning the system and there are many people well-versed on this (like ThePointsGuy) but I'm getting the sense that it's similar to when I tried to learn the craft of 'Extreme Couponing'. Not only did I have to spend 6 months stock piling the Sunday newspaper clippings, but it was a part-time job to combine the deals and make my way to multiple stores around the town all to buy things that I didn't actually need but I did it so that I could get other things that maybe I needed for free. I still have an entire bin of 10 year old deodorant that I'll never use - I probably should have donated it! So as for trying to 'Extreme Coupon' the airline industry, I'm not holding my breath. I think if it were single/couple travel maybe it would be easier, but the more I read, the more I hear about limited availability for point travel when booking for a family. Not impossible, just not something I want to bet my adventures on.
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