Booking Revenue flights - Part 2

In Part 1, I covered the basic principles on booking revenue flights. 

This post will focus on more technical revenue booking methods and mile earning considerations such as:

• Multiple Itineraries
• Hidden City Search
• Mistake Fares
• Mileage Runs

Multiple Itineraries

Sometimes, a split itinerary can offer better savings than flying with one airline. Keep in mind with two separate itineraries, you are at the mercy of the first airline getting you to your connection to make your second airline flight. Not for all scenarios, but a good savings opportunity at times.

Let's say you were planning to fly from Lima, Peru to Minneapolis. LIM-MSP is at best $1,512 on Spirit Airlines (not your most comfortable international airline - check out their April Fools press release). The next best itinerary is $2,508 on United with a stop in Newark.

LIM-MSP $1512 on Spirit or $2508 on United if you refuse to touch Spirit!

But say you pull up JetBlue, an airline that does not publish their fares on travel search engines like Kayak, Orbitz, Priceline, etc. Instead, you would have to go directly to their website. JetBlue flies non-stop from Lima to Fort Lauderdale. This nonstop is $443. Let's say you stop, hop on another flight or spend a day in Miami to fly out next day.

LIM-FLL $443 on Jet Blue website

Checking flights next day, they are as low as $140. This is with a layover before getting home, but you could even book nonstop FLL-MSP on Delta for $412.

FLL-MSP for $140 with a stop or $412 nonstop

So at worst, you could save at least $667 by booking two flights for $845 vs Spirit's $1,512. But you might value it even higher in savings, at least $1,925 worth, if you combine Jet Blue and the cheapest Delta fare for $583 vs $2,508 flying United. This is just an example, but a strategy to consider for savings.

Hidden City Search

I have not done this myself yet, but I am kind of itching to do so just for the adventure! I find it a possible method to use to save if needing a flight near the last minute on a well-traveled route.

Airfare prices are based on demand between start point and end point. If the end point is not a heavy demand route, but makes a stop in a heavy demand destination, then it would still most likely be cheaper. The goal is to get a cheaper flight by booking A-B-C vs A-B. Then, you just do not fly the B-C segment. Point C is considered the "hidden city." The hard part is finding it. Also, keep in mind any remaining segments after the non-flown segment are cancelled. So, you would not want to book a round-trip using this method.

Confused? Look below, and let us see if it makes sense.  In this example, Point A is MSP, Point B is ATL, and Point C is U.S. top 100 airports (the hidden city). I search using advanced routing on ITA Matrix.

A typical search to find a flight from MSP-ATL would be something like this:

MSP-ATL traditional one way  is $371 on AirTran or $503 on Delta non-stop

But here is an alternative way to look for a MSP-ATL flight using a hidden city:

MSP-ATL-????

Savings of $177 on Airtran or $242 on Delta for the non-stop flight to Atlanta!

In this case, it is cheapest to fly MSP-ATL-PIT on AirTran for $194 (compared to the original price of $371 between MSP-ATL), but you would get off in Atlanta and not fly the last segment. Or you could fly Delta for $261 (rather than $503 between MSP-ATL), and do the same thing. 

Although legal, airlines do not like their passengers to do this. If it is done on a consistent basis, the airline could close out the hidden city traveler's frequent flyer account. However, if done occasionally, it should not upset an airline all that much, and it is nearly half the cost of a flight (in this instance)!

Mistake Fares

Mistake fares are the cheapest option to book revenue flights, but they can be the hardest ones to find and book. Occasionally, an airline or booking site will not include a certain charge or have a typo by a revenue manager or computer system. These fares come and go, but never last long. When they come along, our motto is book now, ask questions later, especially seeing that we can cancel within 24 hours and get a full refund as discussed earlier in Part 1.

International Example: Back in November, we heard about the flights to Italy on Twitter from @TheFlightDeal and on Flyertalk. In this instance, it was a Norwegian booking airline site that was not including the fuel surcharge on many international flights. A fuel surcharge is basically an additional/bogus charge typically included in international flights that airlines use to hedge against the cost of fuel increases. Usually on flights to Europe, this is a very large portion of the airfare. 

We had planned to go to San Francisco the last week of February using Southwest points, but instead when this popped up, we decided to shift gears to Italy instead. During the hours that this deal was around (typically they are not around this long), we navigated through the Norwegian website using Google Chrome translate. Also, the fares had to be paid in Norwegian Krones (NOK), so our Chase Sapphire Preferred card came in handy because it did not charge the 3% foreign transaction fee.

~$132 round trip per person from New York to Milan

Domestic Example: Towards the end of the December, there were Delta mistake fares. We could see them and tried to book, but were not able to process through at that point. These fares only lasted 45 minutes. I was trying to plug in round-trip to either JFK or LAX for $34, but some frugal travelers booked Minneapolis to Hawaii in first class for $70!

$34 round-trip for a weekend in New York City is a good deal.

Mileage Runs

The definition of a mileage run is "a series of flights taken in a very short amount of time, solely for the purpose of accumulating frequent flyer miles, with a blatant disregard for the destinations." Basically the flier is going to try and find flights (like in this forum) for the lowest cost and covering the most distance in the least amount of time. The calculation of cents per mile is talked about a lot. Generally getting below five cents per mile is "mileage run worthy" for those who participate in this strategy. Some may take mileage runs to be able to later redeem for a higher value, but mostly these are done to reach elite status on an airline. When elite status is earned, upgrades to first class are more likely and can be locked in prior to the day of flight. 

Example: Here is a flight that went JFK-SJU-JFK-SFO-MSP-JFK-SJU-JFK for $450, and all of the segments were completed within 36 hours. The value of this was 4.1 cents per mile. Just to clarify, we did not take this flight(s)!

In recent years, it has become harder to reach elite status with airlines like United and Delta, since they have added "minimum qualifying dollars" as part of the equation for elite status and only include the base fare (not taxes, fuel surcharges, etc). For example, United's door opener for elite status is 25k miles and $2,500 Premier Qualifying Dollars (PQD) up to 100k miles and $10,000. That puts the leisure flyer out of contention. However, if a business flier covers most of the $2,500 PQD while flying for work, it might not be a bad idea to pick up a few mileage runs to top off the elite status. 

After our flight to Italy, I earned 8,020 miles, and I have another ~8,000 miles coming later this year with flights to and from Hawaii. So if getting elite status was based on just miles flown, I would have considered flying back-to-back flights to Milan or picking up 9,000 miles on some other mileage run to reach 25k miles. However, my PQDs sit at a measly $36 after the round-trip Italy, far from getting close to $2,500 needed to achieve elite status on United. 

Other airlines like Delta are taking the ball from mileage runners and going home. Starting January 1 2015, Delta flying miles will be earned based on a multiple of the flight cost vs the miles flown. So in the $34 MSP-JFK mistake fare, the total earned miles this year would be 2,056 but next year would be 170.

MSP-JFK $34 miles earned in 2014 vs 2015

Overall Summary

The best way to keep in the know and get the best deals about revenue / sale / mistake fares is to follow Twitter handles (such as @airfarewatchdog @theflightdeal @faredealalert), get the alerts sent to your phone, and check the Flyertalk mileage run forum often. Do not be afraid to get a little creative in itinerary planning, and grow your own community network (there are a lot of group texts with our travel friends)! If a flight comes up that will not be around for very long, book now and use the next 24 hours to firm up plans or cancel for a full refund.

Questions? Comments? Other ideas for booking revenue flights? Please feel free to contact us. We love hearing other opinions or tips on travel savings!