Airline Cheat Sheet ~ How to Bypass Airline’s Automated Phone System to Get a Real Person

Awesome! The British Travel site Cheap Flights (http://www.cheapflights.co.uk) has created an infograph helping travelers get ahold real human beings when calling an airline for help. 

Frequent travelers are all aware of the aggravation and time wasted whenever you have to call an airline to get help. Sometimes it’s all but impossible to find your way through the system (especially if the trusty “press 0 for operator” doesn’t work. 🙂 

So Cheap Flights put together this sheet to tell you what buttons to push if you want to get ahold of a person. Great Idea!

Tips for finding cheap airline fares

via “The Associated Press”

TIPS FOR FINDING CHEAP FARES

— Travel during off-peak times. Two of the slowest periods for air travel are Dec. 1 to Dec. 14 and then Jan. 4 to Feb. 15.

— Fly on slow days. Planes tend to have the most empty seats on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Saturdays.

— Do a flexible date search. Sites like ITA Software and Cheapair.com let travelers pull up a calendar with the cheapest days to fly between two airports.

— Consider nearby airports. Driving an extra 50 miles might save $100 per person.

— Look for routes flown by Frontier, Southwest and Spirit. Other airlines are matching or beating their fares.

— Take advantage of the 24-hour rule. Passengers have 24 hours after buying a ticket to get a full refund. The day after booking a flight, check back to see if fares have fallen. Cancel and rebook at the lower price. . . . .

READ MORE

“How To… Get the Best Summer Airfares”

Have you bought your flight tickets yet? Some of these tricks might help! **DB

“How To… Get the Best Summer Airfares”

by Bill Fink via “Yahoo“

The River Thames in London (Photo: Ville Miettinen/Flickr)

As kids finish with school and the summer travel season kicks off, last-minute travel planners are getting sticker shock scanning airfares to Europe. June round-trip flights from New York to London are running $1,600, with fares from Atlanta or San Francisco topping $2,000. It’s shaping up to be one of the busiest summer travel seasons in years, and many airlines are pricing accordingly.

But there are deals to be had, if you follow a few basic bargain-hunting tips—some of them logical, some a bit surprising.

Summer vacation in Barbados? Don’t mind if we do. (Photo: Greg McMullin/Flickr)

Flexibility on Destination—and Departure Point

Airfares usually follow the basic rules of supply and demand. Europe is a super-popular summer destination, and so you usually get super-high fares.

Consider instead… Non-traditional summer vacation destinations like the Caribbean, ski towns, and the southern hemisphere (where it’s winter) can all offer compelling flight deals. And sometimes there’s an increase in the supply of airlines to a city—as is currently the case in Seattle, where Delta is expanding to make it their West Coast hub and engaging in a fare war with existing carriers, making it a rare destination deal this summer.

Surprising deals can also be found by changing your departure city. George Hobica of Airfarewatchdog.com cites Boston-Spain summer fares that are over $800 cheaper those departing from New York City. “For that, you could almost hire a limo to Boston and still save money!” he jokes, semi-seriously. So when planning those trips, think beyond JFK vs. LaGuardia or SFO vs. Oakland, and expand your search regionally.

“Cost2travel.com Launched with Multiple Travel Tools”

via “PR Web”

“Cost2travel website, which was recently launched in November, has drawn a growing amount of interest and visitors.

The website focuses on providing data about cost of travelling and living in various nations all over the world for global tourists, with price for essential products and services in these countries. The information on Cost2Travel is frequently updated by a team of local contributors from around the world, who ensure the cost data is latest and credible.

In addition, Cost2travel also supports users in drafting budgets for their trip with its budget planning tool, which contains anything from the major spend on flight and accommodation to the very little details such as internet fee.

One senior editor of Cost2travel spoke about the website with confidence: “The idea of online cost calculator is not new, but we are outstanding to others because we reach the lesser  . . . .”