SO MUCH FOR CHEAP FLIGHTS
My enthusiasm for Scott’s Cheap Flights has been unbounded this year. Scott’s Cheap Flights has recently changed it’s name to Going.com. So far Scott has only listed flights within or to and from the United States. What he offers is flights at 40 to 60% of normal flight costs. These flights are usually available for a day or two and often for a month or two window, usually three or four months out.
They are ideal for people who are not picky where they are going or for those who have a list of twenty places they would like to visit and will take whatever comes up. It is perfect for retired people who are always free and who can turn on a dime. I am one of those people. So this trip started with an open jaw ticket of Asheville to Paris on January 10 and back to Asheville from Amsterdam on April 5 on United. One of our tickets was free because I had charged $3000 to the card (and paid it off regularly) over a three month period. And paid for with these free miles regular Economy was the same price as basic economy. Basic economy is usually $150 cheaper than regular economy when paying with cash but doesn’t allow changes or refunds if you have to change or cancel. We decided for this long trip to get tickets we could change in case one of us got sick along the way. It is good we did because my health forced me to change. When I had to change my United ticket to Paris I actually got a refund of 2500 points. So that part of the trip using Scott’s cheap tickets worked well. The ticket when paid for with cash was $700, but would have been $1000 to $1200 if not bought through Scott’s Cheap Flights.
But where I learned more than I want to know about cheap tickets was the ticket I bought on Finnair from Paris to Delhi and back through Helsinki for ten days and then back to Paris. This ticket cost $775 which was a reasonable price. We wanted to visit Finland and the Baltic states of Estonia and Latvia.
The ticket was changeable without a fee. Airlines make a lot of their money on fees with change fees being a way to gouge customers. So for $150 extra I avoided this fee when I moved from basic economy to regular economy.
In my mind this meant no cost for changing flights. I had changed this flight to March 1 when the doctor told me to put off going on the trip until I was stable. But when on Monday I tried to change it back to this Wednesday, only two days away, the cost of the same itinerary that I bought for $775 now cost $2300. The agent at Travelocity said I wouldn’t be charged a fee, but I was going to be charged $1530 more for a ticket I had paid $775 for because the ticket price for Wednesday had shot up. The guideline for getting cheap flights is that the closer you are to the day you want to fly the higher the cost will be. Last minute flights are aimed at business passengers who often have to fly at the last minute with businesses somehow not caring about cost.
I said I would think about the extra $1530 and spent the rest of Monday, after my euphoria over being able to leave immediately began to slide away, trying to find a way out. It finally appeared that it would be cheaper to start all over, to lose the first $775 and go on Gulf Air, which was only $900 round trip Paris to India on Friday and back and then to find a cheap way to join Todd and Susie in Helsinki.
But I thought I would try Travelocity one more time and this time a young woman somewhere in Central America said that I would only have to pay $775 more, doubling the cost of my ticket but much cheaper than the cost I had been quoted earlier. This turned out to be the cheapest option and it also meant that I would be flying with Todd and Susie the rest of the trip.
I certainly learned a lesson, although in this case there was nothing I could do to avoid the doubling of the flight costs.
A changeable ticket is not that valuable after all because the change can be very expensive. But if you have to change you have to change, as I did. This is another reason for taking short one month trips with as inexpensive a ticket as you can get such as the round trip ticket from Asheville to Barcelona for $371. When the threat of Covid made me cancel that trip I only lost $371 (not the normal $900) instead of having to pay double for the trip, I just stayed home.
I don’t what the lesson in this is. The airlines first charged me a cut rate price and I felt triumphant for getting such a cheap ticket and then the airlines socked it to me when I tried to change making me feel that I had been conned. If I had paid the normal high price rather than jumping on a cheap ticket and then had had to change the added cost of the change would have been much lower but the total cost the same.
I am still enthusiastic about Scott’s Cheap Flights/GOING, but I am also learning the possible pitfalls as well.
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 