IM in a traveling mood. I’d prefer to go international I think (live in New York). I remember one used to be able to be a courier or something for those types of services if you didnt bring luggage or something like that. I don’t necessarily need it that cheap. Anyone know a good resource for finding the cheapest deals. I do know of cheaptickets.com but was wondering if there were any other/better ones. Thanks.
I just did that - just for the H of it my wife and I are going to south carolina for $79 roundtrip (each - from NY). She got a notice about the special fare w/ her air milage account. I really don’t know how to go about this otherwise but there should be a site somewhere that just list cheap trips to anywhere.
Go to any agent who books flights etc. and ask them to ‘check the consolidators’ for a particular route.
Airlines sell of blocks of unsold tickets to consolidators who then dispose of them on the soft market.
In the past three years I have managed UK- East Coast for £130- about $200 round trip and £170- about $250 for UK - West Coast round trip.
You sometimes have to convince them that they want to sell the tickets to you- they would rather make a greater profit by a more conventional fare. I usually choose two agents and play them off against each other.
One other thing you can try is travel.yahoo.com. They have a feature called “find best fares” … if you enter in your departure and destination, then click on the “find best fares” button (or something similar), it’ll give you all the deals the different airlines have for travel to/from those two cities.
Sure, lots of places do that, Hokie. He’s looking for something that’ll give you some good prices for airline tickets with virtually no constraints. (Eg. ‘From any airport in the metropolitan New York area to anywhere in Europe, sometime in the next six months.’) I don’t know of any online fare database that’ll do searches like that …
You could always search the internet for how to become an “air courier”. I don’t know anyone who does it personally, but apparently you can fly quite cheaply by giving your baggage allowance to a company needing to ship some goods. The drawbacks, or so I’ve heard: you don’t get much choice of where you’re going, you tend to have to leave on short notice, and you’re pretty much limited to one carry-on bag, so you have to travel light. And, in this modern ultra-paranoid culture, I’m not sure just how much couriers are even used anymore. Still, it’s worth a shot.
Duh, you mentioned being a courier in the OP. Well, then, let’s see what an internet search turns up:
http://www.courier.org/ seems to be the hottest link. Give it a look-see.
For international deals, check w/the Eurotrip.com site at:
http://www.eurotrip.com/forum/forum.asp?FORUM_ID=7
Users put a lot of time & effort into seeking best flight deals.