$348 to France from the D.C. area?
OMG…
Not sure life could be much better, right? Not so fast.
Although the airlines have been flooding social media with airline ticket deals, there is always a catch. The latest trick is for airlines to list the prices for basic economy which includes no advanced seat selection and no checked bag. Nice. So after you add the seat selection and a checked bag, you could end up paying more than $500.
How to get a cheap ticket
Rule #1: Be patient.
Rule #2: Be diligent. By that we mean you’re willing to spend a few hours a day looking for the cheapest fare.
When we are starting our planning for our latest trip we start looking at ticket prices. For us, there are 3 key sites that we use:
- Sites like secretflying.com and scottscheapflights.com. Although not perfect, they list the latest flight deals out of your local airport and can be used to start your planning.
- Google flights. This is pretty powerful tool that one can use to get departure and arrival dates for your flight. It also has a feature for 1 and 2 week trip in the next 6 months and gives you the best dates to fly. Deleting the destination and using the map function shows one the prices to all the European cities at the same time.
- Airline sites. The final step for us is to go onto the airlines site and see what the prices they have listed. Believe it or not, after logging into their sites with your frequent flier number, there are sometimes better deals for members.
We are currently planning our next trip and are going to Nice. Oh that’s nice. Iceland Air didn’t work for us and they don’t fly to Nice.
To get the best deal, we spent several days looking at other major airlines, airplane configurations, seat selections and baggage fees. Although there are pros and cons to some of the itineraries, we ended up finding the perfect flight. Was it $348? No. We did end up getting deal from the DC area to Nice for under $500 a ticket with a 3 hr layover each way in New York. This is a great deal considering that Nice isn’t a major hub with frequent direct flights from the U.S.
Now time to look for a place to stay.
