Me and a friend spoke to a travel agent who told us that the cheapest flight to New Zealand that she could get for us would be at least $700. That just wasn’t going to cut it with our plans. So we sat down and spent hours online comparing and tweaking every option trying to find the cheapest flight that we could. Finally, we saw it! $398… by far the cheapest fare we had seen. We were elated and rushed to book it. I missed one of the fields and had to resubmit my info. My buddy had gotten a confirmation already. I rushed to submit my info and when it went through the price suddenly shot up to $570!!
This was a painful lesson to learn but also one I learned to exploit in the future. What I hadn’t paid any attention to was that there was only 1 seat remaining on the particular flight. The few minute delay I had due to resubmitting my info caused the seat to be filled and the fare to increase drastically for me. After this ordeal, I did some research and found that the same thing happened to people attempting to purchase 2 tickets for a flight and receiving a much higher price than when they attempted to buy a single ticket.
If the same thing happens to you or if you and a friend discover a low fare with only 1 ticket remaining, there’s a way to assure you both receive the low price.On seperate computers, you and a friend can submit your respective information and click ‘Reserve Reservation’ at the exact time to receive the same price. I’ve used this technique a handful of times and it has always worked. Apparently, I’m not the only one as others have had success with this as well. Now there is the risk that you may not be on the same flight but this has never happened to me yet. The hundreds of dollars saved just means that once you get to the destination you’re headed you can do that skydive you’ve always wanted, or stay another week longer, or visit a few more places nearby that you wouldn’t have. Try it out yourself!
PS: I found this cool website last night for creating travel routes. Maybe give it a try for your next travel planning!
Whats your next travel plan? 🙂