Traveling over Thanksgiving? Here’s the best time to fly

by Grant Martin on

The only thing that’s worse than traveling through congested airports and highways during the Thanksgiving season is the airfare that’s associated with it. Taking advantage of the demand, airlines perennially jack up the prices on everyday airfare, making the simplest of tickets outrageously expensive.

Naturally, the easiest way around these fares is to fly on lower-demand days, or not Tuesday and Sunday. To illustrate this, our friends over at Travelocity put together the above dandy chart to show the differences in fares among travel days. It’s pretty easy to see that the Tuesday and Wednesday before Thanksgiving are the most expensive days to fly. Conversely, departing on Thanksgiving Day and returning on Tuesday, the 30th is most often the cheapest.

Bear in mind that the data above only applies to domestic routes — for travel to foreign countries (where there is no Thanksgiving), airfares can be drastically different and potentially even cheaper. More reason to spend the holidays abroad, we reckon.

Like Cheapflights, get $50 in airfare credit

by Grant Martin on

Interested in selling your Facebook soul for $50 off of your next flight? I am! The marketing folks over at Cheapflights and Vayama launched a campaign soliciting “likes” and shares late last month, in an effort to spread the word about their fare booking site across the web.

All that you have to do to earn $50 worth of credit redeemable from September 8 through October 5 is navigate over to their Facebook page, like the promotion and share it with your friends.

For the increased exposure that they get on the web, you’ll receive a $50 credit towards any purchased flight through the month of September — and from what we can tell, that applies to any flight that they pull up through their GDS.

This means that straight off the shelf, that $200 fare from Chicago to New York that you buy on American Airlines should be $150 after applying this voucher. Not bad for a small slice of your Facebook feed.

Who says money can’t buy friends?

[photo via Egil Fujikawa Nes on flickr]

The cheapest way from London to Paris: Bus service for £15

by Grant Martin on

Backpackers rejoice. Eurolines, a part of UK bus carrier National Express has reduced the fare of their bus service from London to Paris, a hotly competitive route currently served by dozens of air and rail carriers. To date, Eurostar and budget air carriers have fought hard over the route, with fares on either sinking as low as $100 round trip.

Currently, one of the most common inexpensive routes taken is via low cost carrier such as Easyjet, where non-peak flights can often be found for a bargain. Eurostar, conversely, delivers passengers from city-center to city-center without security hassles and sometimes in just as much travel time.

With Eurolines, passengers can pay as little as £15 ($24 as of August 2010) for one way fare between the two cities. Travel time? Seven hours, and there’s even an over night bus that leaves at 11PM. For those without a tight schedule though, that’s a lot of money saved.

Make sure you book your tickets far in advance though, like with most carriers the £15 fares are probably in short supply.

[Via AERBT]

United creates Optathlon games for day-of-departure prizes

by Grant Martin on

It’s a long shot, but if all of your attempts to find a better seat, upgrade and improve your upcoming trip on United Airlines have failed then there’s one last thing you can do. Last week, United launched a series of video games on their website with prizes aimed at traveling customers.

What can you win? Among other things, it’s possible to earn the opportunity to skip those pesky long lines at the TSA checkpoint or maybe even win an upgrade to economy plus. All you have to do is play for an entry.

Obviously, United’s new games are targeted at educating the consumer on their full host of products and upgrades, including economy plus (more leg room and closer to the front of the plane) and elite status. And you will have to install a little game widget into your browser to make the games work. But for the chance to win a sweet little upgrade either on the plane or at the airport, it’s definitely worth a shot. Besides, the games are kind of fun.

You can check out the full series of games over at Optathlon.com.

[image credit to flickr’s lovely lemur]

STA takes $200 off of ANY FLIGHT until 11AM on Friday

by Grant Martin on

It took us a bit of time to suss out the details, but we’ve now verified it. STA Travel has is having an epic sale on airfares. Basically, they’re offering $200 off of any airplane ticket you can find, provided you book it through an STA agent over the phone or in person.

Here’s how it works: From 11AM on Thursday, July 1 to 11AM on Friday, July 2nd, STA has been offering the rebate on international fares by region. From 11AM to 5PM it was from the US to Europe. From 5 – 11PM it is (was) to South and Central America. From 11PM – 5AM it’s to Africa and the Middle East and from 5AM – 11AM Asia and the Pacific will be on sale.

All you need to do is find your ideal itinerary, take it to an agent (or call them@ 800.781.4040) and then ask them to book the ticket with the discount.

Dubious? We were too, so this afternoon we took a $323 fare from Chicago to Bogota, Colombia to the STA Travel near Gadling Labs in Evanston, IL and asked to book the flight. After ten minutes of typing the travel agent was NOT able to find the same fare that Kayak found — however, she found a similar, $392 fare that was bookable. Subtracting the $200 promo and adding a $30 booking fee, we were thus presented with a bill for $222.

For a ticket from Chicago to Colombia, that’s not bad.

The caveat? There appear to be only a certain number of rebates available for each block of time. Right now the Latin America fares are already sold out, and with more people in the know, Africa/Middle East and Asia fares may go quick. Our advice is to do your research early and pick out ideal flights. When the time comes, call the STA desk and ask for specific flights — if you get the right agent he or she will make magic happen.