Every now and then, I will have to book a flight on short notice to some city where I have to do business, and what I have found is that last minute air travel can be expensive, but it can also be cheap if you keep your eyes and ears open.
I recently had to make a trip to Denver to meet with a colleague about a proposal we were working on, and because he lives in San Francisco and I live in the Dallas/Fort Worth area, we decided to meet halfway. I figured that I was probably going to end up spending an arm and a leg to get out there.
I looked through some old Travelocity e-mails that I had in my inbox, and found one with a trip to Denver that still had one day to book, as long as I traveled within a certain time frame. As it happened, I was traveling at the time that the deal was for, so I went ahead and tried to book the deal.
Now, this is not always a sure thing, because I've tried it before where those tickets have all been booked, even though I was still within the window to order tickets. Since this was last minute air travel, I realized that I may not get them, but there were still tickets available, and at a good price. I ended up paying just under $300 for a a round trip, which was a quite a relief.
On the other hand, when I was in college about 14 years ago, I spent a semester studying abroad in England, and I got a very good deal when I went because, number one, I was going to be there for a long time, and secondly, I was traveling at a rather unpopular time of the year to be visiting England.
I became very good friends with a man named Damion while I was over there, and it just so happened that he and fiance decided to push up their wedding to two weeks after I had returned to the United States. He e-mailed me and told me that he would really like for me to be there, and because this was last minute airline travel, and international travel at that, I knew that I was going take a big hit to my pocketbook.
As it turned out, it ended up costing me about $400 more to go back than it had on my original trip to England just five months prior. He offered to pay the difference, but we were friends and I knew he really wanted me to be there, so I told him not to worry about, but I was surprised there was such a big difference in price.
Last minute air travel can be costly, but you can also find good deals from time to time because not enough people are traveling on a particular flight. I have experienced both situations, and it really just comes down to how much you pay attention to the best deals possible.
Pages
▼