Ever since we moved away from our home in Montreal, we have made it a tradition to go spend Christmas with family and friends. This has also proven to be just enough winter for us, how nice the Christmas lights are reflecting off the fresh white snow in December. Having spent most of our lives in Montreal, we know what follows, and we are always happy to get back on the flight to the south after a week or so of holiday visiting to escape those months of bitter cold.
The airlines have also learned to profit from the many travelers that flock back to the nest during holidays and this is clearly reflected in the fares which are often double or even triple what they normally are whether you are paying with cash or with points.
We’ve found that for holiday flight bargains the best time to book is as far in advance as you can. This is what we typically do. For Christmas we bought our tickets in February (as soon as the airlines sold them).
Of course, when you make plans far in advance, you always run the risk of getting surprised. As luck would have it this year we’ve ended up in Miami instead of Austin, so flying back through Austin to catch our original flight just didn’t make any sense.
As I perused the websites looking at flight prices, I was getting really discouraged as everything was already much more than our original early bird fare, and we would now also have to consider change fees.
The fees and ticket price differences were looking like they were going to cost us over a thousand dollars, all at a time when we were actually trying to be a little more frugal. So aside from looking at the usual discount fare pages and various airline tools out there (look early and look often), I saw an interesting trick from one of these sites, which I had not previously considered.
Instead of booking a return flight, I started to look at pricing for two one-way segments instead which could be issued as separate tickets. I was actually amazed at how the same flight could be hundreds of dollars cheaper when bought as two one-ways instead of a return ticket: same seat, same flight number, on two separate record locators. I did not see any downside.
So, perhaps just a little silver lining for us in the situation in which we found ourselves. Even though we were not happy to have to top up an already expensive trip with change fees and supplemental costs, at least we were able to get the best deal possible.
For those that are willing to do a little extra searching this travel tip may pay back big time so we wanted to share that with our readers.
Be sure to have a look at our Travel Tips