Free Fired Airline Ticket Agent Reveals Airline Secrets by Nicholas Depinto

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    Figuring out whether a different airport will save you money may be harder than you think. Internet booking engines may or may not be helpful in situations like this. Some of course allow you to search for all neighboring airports, while others tend to be “dumber” and allow you to search one departing airport at a time. If you don’t want to do all the work, a travel agent could help.
     
    Something that I want to tell you here for New Yorkers….when flying out of New York, the best bet for a lowest fare will ALMOST ALWAYS be Newark (EWR).
     
    Secret # 8: Look for code-share bargains
    Some of you may have already heard of code shares. A code share is an arrangement an airline has with another airline that allows it to sell tickets served by the other airline. Under a code share agreement, each airline gets to sell seats on the same plane as if they were their own.
    Code-sharing is supposed to help passengers by making things easier. You can more easily gain frequent flyer miles, for one thing. But be careful about this because the airlines won’t always tell you that you’ve been booked on a code-share flight.
     
    With code-share flights come some problems though. By law, the computerized reservations systems owned by the airlines (CRS) is NOT supposed to show bias by displaying one airlines’ flights more prominently than another’s. But, this is not really the case. Code-sharing lets flights that used to be interline flights come up in the listings, which increases the chances of a travel agent or reservation agent to book them before seeing the cheaper alternatives. Here’s one example of a code-share savings. I tried to book a flight from New York to Amsterdam on TWA. The total fare was $1203 for TWA. With the TWA code-share partner, I paid $481. Look at how much I saved simply by asking if there were any code-share flights from New York to Amsterdam.
     
    Continental Airlines has a code-share airline, called America West. And America West usually ends up being cheaper than Continental. For example, book on America West (it says Continental on the outside of the plane—but it’s a code-share flight, remember), and you save $150 from Phoenix to Fort Meyers.
    Here’s the challenge—find out which flights are code-share flights (call up and ask!!), and check the pricing offered by BOTH airline partners.
     
    If you’re booking online, you should be able to see (read the fine print) to find code-share flights. The code-share airline is usually there, but in smaller print or in a footnote.
     
    Your best bet to take advantage of the code-share situation is talking to a travel agent. They usually can search all the code-share flights.
     
    And keep in mind that even though you may have found code-share partners offering drastically different fares for the same flight, it doesn’t mean you found the cheapest way of getting to your destination. Other ways to get lower fares include low-fare airlines, consolidators, or even air courier flights.
     
    Secret # 9: Buy roundtrip, even for one way flights
    One day you’ll have to take some sort of one way flight. Maybe you’ll have to fly somewhere and drive back to where you started, or some other issue forces you to have to fly one way.
     
    The first thing you’ll want to do is check out a low fare airline. The low fare airlines (like Jetblue.com) have one way fares that tend to be somewhat reasonable. But, if there is NO low-fare carrier serving your destination, you will likely find that major airlines offer one way fares at sky-high prices.
     
    The solution is for you to buy a roundtrip excursion fare and use only the outgoing coupon. All you’re doing for the airline’s purpose is “missing” your return flight. If you are using this trick though, ALWAYS make sure that the flight you want to take is the FIRST coupon on the ticket. Otherwise, the airline will think you are a no-show and cancel your return reservation. If you show up with the