Flying Tips This Holiday Season

I recently read a couple of great articles about about flying during the holiday season in Real Simple and Money magazines. The information was so useful that I thought I'd share:

1) To get the best prices, use travel sites like Travelocity, Expedia, etc., but then call the airline directly or visit the airline website to search for best prices. My husband and I did this recently for our flights to NYC for New Years, and we saved 4%- not that this was a huge savings, but it was still a savings.

2) According to Real Simple, book 90 days prior to your destination. It's probably a little late for others to do that for Christmas and New Years this season, but we did so and found two round trip tickets from Detroit to NYC, direct for $179 each.

3) Per Money magazine, fly out from big HUBs. We did this! Rather than flying from Grand Rapids, we are driving to Detroit and leaving from there. We are saving more than the cost to drive to Detroit, and we're leaving our car at a friends so there are no parking costs to worry about.

4) According to Money magazine, fly out early to avoid getting bumped. For us, it's too early to tell if we'll get bumped, but with our 8 a.m. flight we are hopeful we won't get bumped.

5) Per Money, fly on off peak dates and times, and you could save 20-35%! We booked our flights from Wednesday, December 31st right on the holiday to Tuesday, January 6th two days past the peak return date. By doing this, we were able to prolong our fun in the big city by at least two days, but we also saved close to 30%. To us, this was a win/win!

Here are a couple of other ways to try to minimize your costs and stress at the airport:

• Make sure your bag weighs less than 50 pounds! Otherwise, you'll pay more for the heavy bag than you would have paid in fees to check a second bag!
• Check in 24 hours before your scheduled flight to avoid being bumped!
• If your flight is delayed between 1 and 2 hours, you should get a voucher for a one way pass up to $400.
• If your flight is delayed more than 2 hours you should get a voucher that is worth twice the cost of your one way fare.
• Worst case- if your flight is canceled, call your airline's 1-800 number to get re-booked- this will be faster than going to the counter where an airline employee is being mobbed by disgruntled fliers. You may even be able to get your airline to endorse your ticket to another carrier.

Most of all, remember that you have options, and remember that these folks are just the messengers! With the dramatic increase in fuel costs earlier this fall, the airlines made decisions to schedule less flights this holiday season and to have flights be more crowded. While this might be a slight inconvenience for us as travelers, it is the way to keep costs down.