I’m leaving on a jet-plane.
On Tuesday I booked flights to the USA. This was for a family reunion in April to coincide with my brother graduating from the Marine Corps bootcamp. British Airways has a sale every year in January and September and I wanted to make sure I got in before it ended. I always try to fly BA because of the service, punctuality and cleanliness. Of course everyone has their preference but for me BA is like Apple – sure it’s more expensive (debatable) but it’s always worth it (usually).
Since there’s now four of us (two adults, child & infant) we were never going to get anything for under £1K. And at that price you want to make sure you get the best deal you can. It so happened that evening we had a friend over who is a serious frequent flyer. He mentioned in passing the other day that he just had a whole week for the first time in ages without a plane flight. He introduced to me a couple of services online for serious flying-geeks. One is called Expert Flyer and the other, which is linked, is called FlyerTalk.
Expert Flyer is a fascinating service that you pay to get access to. Since I only needed it for one flight I took advantage of the 5-day free trial and then cancelled it. However if you are a frequent flyer the $10/£7 per month membership is likely to be well worth it. Expert Flyer is a site that gathers lots of technical information about flights. It tells you how many tickets are available in each class and fare-code. I was new-ish to fare-codes but essentially they are ways for the airline to distinguish between tickets. For example a standard economy ticket could be A, a flexible economy ticket would be B and the cheapest non-refundable economy ticket would be C. This carries on with the various classes (First, Business/ClubWorld, Economy, EconomyPlus etc), the various ways you can buy them (money, airmiles etc) and the many conditions attached. The site also tells you how many upgrades are available for each area – eg. this way if you have a choice a between two flights you can choose which is more likely to offer upgrades. There’s a lot of information here and it will take you time to learn how to first understand it then more time to learn how to use it. Again if you fly twice a year it’s probably not for you, but if you’re flying a few times a month then it’s worth getting up to speed. Another useful feature is the stats it gives on individual flights. They show a percentage for how often the plane is on time and how long on average it is late by. This helps you work out the best times and connections. I was fascinated to learn about all this though unless I get a job with tons of travel I’m unlikely to require it much at all.
The second site, which is linked, is much more useful for me. It’s a forum about everything flying related. FlyerTalk is a series of message boards with all kinds of chat about flying. They have dedicated sites for all the Airmiles programs and I’m quickly becoming a regular visitor to the British Airways Executive Club pages. These pages are full of advice, complaints, discussions and hints/tips for maximising your membership. A useful part for me is the section on trying to get more points. As I travel so little (a trip to the US every 18 months and couple trips in Europe per year) I don’t build up miles in the traditional way. I’ve got a credit card that collect miles. The forum is replete with ideas for earning miles. The imagination here is amazing and I thought I’d highlight just one to give you an idea of the kind of stuff discussed.
The US Mint is trying to get $1 coins into circulation. It does this by selling them to individuals. Individuals can buy these coins at face value from the US Mint with a credit card. The US Mint ships them FREE to your house so you can spend them, deposit them and just generally get them into circulation. If you have a credit card that collects points or miles or cashback then you can order the coins from the Mint using your credit card and then deposit them into your account at the bank. This way you can accumulate as many miles as you want for the price of a trip to your bank. This works because the Mint processes your card just like any other purchase. Ingenious stuff. If your card gave you a generous 5% cashback for example you’d be gettting $1 for $.95!
I’m not sure if I’d be able to do the above since I don’t live in the US but I’m thinking of trying to do a deal with my dad who lives in the US.
FlyerTalk has huge amounts of advice including which seats are the best on which plans and airlines, tips for travelling with kids, lounge access tips, reviews of services in airports all over the world, all kinds of technical stuff about fares and miles programmes… It’s the Wikipedia of flying.
But back to the BA Sale. The BA sale finished at midnight on Tuesday. I missed the deadline because I couldn’t find the right deal. However using Expedia I managed to get a great deal on BA flights even after the deadline. I always check all of the comparison sites (Opodo, Expedia, Travelocity, Kayak, etc) but Expedia usually comes out on top.
