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Cheap Airplane Flights: Travel Agent Secrets
For those looking to get cheap airline flights, I’m about to reveal the secrets that I’ve learned as a travel agent. I want you to know that in order to get really great cheap flights, you must first understand the process behind the travel industry. Once this becomes clear, we can take a look at a few tools that most folks don’t know about, but what can save you a bundle.
First, think of the travel industry as a giant flea market, and each flight is a specific item that is for sale. For the sake of this example, let’s say oranges. Now, everyone knows that oranges are cheaper when they first get picked (high supply, medium demand) because people aren’t ready for them. After a few days, people start thinking about what they could do with oranges (juice, duck a la orange, smoothies, cookies, etc). Suddenly, demand picks up, and so do the prices (high supply, high demand). Later in the season, folks are still really into oranges, but there’s left to go around (low supply, high demand). The result? Prices skyrocket.
The key to finding cheap airplane flights is to buy when the supply is high. The key, therefore, is this: buy your tickets as far in advance as possible. I’ve seen far too many clients lose their shirt because they thought “the price was so high today, it’d have to go down tomorrow. “ Sure, just like the oranges did.
OK, now that we’ve covered when you should buy, let’s look at where you can find cheap airplane flights available. In the case of the flea market, each stand will be competing against each other, which in turn keeps the prices similar. So where do we go?
The answer, my friend, is not the stand down the way. It’s the farm.
The same goes for airlines. If you want cheap tickets, you don’t bother with the market; you cut out the middleman and go to the wholesalers. Forget online search engines… the next time you go online, search for the term “airline consolidators (location).” This will give you the most current listing of popular wholesalers in the travel industry. The two I can personally recommend are Skylink and C&H. I have routinely used consolidators (or wholesalers, they’re the same thing) to save my clients hundreds of dollars.
How? Look at it this way: each flight has different “class” fares, and I’m not just talking about business and economy. Within economy class, there are sub classes, such as Y (the most expensive) and U (one of the cheapest). Unlike business vs. economy, there is no apparent difference between these sub classes.
In fact, you could be sitting next to someone who paid hundreds of dollars less than you did.
Consolidators purchase tickets in bulk and ahead of time, which allows them access to the cheaper class of service. Therefore, you could buy a Y class seat from Orbitz for $1400, or you could buy a U class seat from a consolidator for $1200. Your call. In conclusion, use these strategies to help find cheap airplane flights around the world. Just try not to rub in to the poor sap sitting next to you! |