There are a number of strategies that people swear when buying airline tickets, from buying tickets months in advance to looking for flights only on certain days of the week. While the usefulness of these strategies is questionable, there is money-saving advice that all travelers should use when looking for flights, according to Scott Cheap Flights founder Scott Keyes.
When buying airline tickets for a group of people, Keyes recommends always comparing full group fares with the price of one or two seats on the same flight.
Typically, airlines sell their tickets in “deposits,” Keyes tells CNBC Make It. This means that one flight can have 10 tickets available for $ 99, 15 tickets available for $ 129, another 30 available for $ 149, and so on. When a cheaper deposit is sold, customers looking for flights receive more expensive tickets.
This means that if a family of four is looking for a flight, the airline’s ticketing system will only show them the tickets in a bucket that can accommodate up to four seats.
“If there are only two seats left in the cheapest depot and you need three tickets, they will outperform you in the next depot,” Keyes says. “To my knowledge, virtually every airline does this method of selling tickets.”
If there are only two seats left in the cheapest deposit and you need three tickets, you will be overtaken in the next deposit.
Scott Keyes
Founder, Cheap Flights from Scott
On a recent trip from Portland, Oregon, to New York, Keyes was looking for an airfare for three people. When he looked at the price of three seats, he was offered a trio of tickets for $ 178 each. But when he changed his search for two passengers, the cost of a ticket dropped to $ 117 each.
This is because the system had two tickets left in the $ 117 deposit and automatically earned it up to the most expensive deposit when he had searched for the three together. He ended up buying two tickets for $ 117 and one for $ 178.
“I ended up saving $ 120 by reserving the menu instead of doing it as a whole group,” he says. “It won’t work every time, but knowing how to always check if it’s cheaper to book fewer tickets at once is an easy way to often save a lot of money.”
Keyes also recommends that people using this method call the airline after purchasing tickets to combine separate itineraries into a single booking.
“That way, if the flight is canceled or delayed or if it’s run over, everyone is handled together instead of two of the people being able to make a different flight from the third person,” he says.
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