Take More Vacations: How to Search Better, Book Cheaper, and Travel the World

In general, you’ll only find cheaper hidden-city ticket fares if you’re traveling to a hub city. That’s because most airlines operate a hub-and-spoke route model, whereby the majority of their flights are to or from a central city. Think Atlanta (Delta), Philadelphia (American), or Denver (United). If you want to visit a major hub city like Chicago

While airline revenue managers consider dozens of constantly changing factors to help them determine airfare, from oil prices to worldwide events to major economic trends, there are three primary causes for price fluctuations: autopilot pricing, unexpected customer demand, and competition.

Because nothing in life is free, the advent of cheap fares came with some less celebrated changes. Denser seat layouts, inconvenient flight times, no meals, fewer attendants, connecting rather than nonstop flights. But passengers showed they were willing to sacrifice comfort to save money, and within a year, almost every major airline had…

Some high

The fundamental problem with retrospective studies is that they don’t have any predictive power. They’re building a model that overfits historical data too closely, rather than a model designed to forecast the future. You may as well look at last year’s stock market returns, find the day with the highest performance, and declare that that’s the bes

Most airlines charge a minimum of $200—and significantly more if it’s an international flight—to cancel a ticket and refund the remainder. And that’s assuming you haven’t purchased a basic economy fare, which on most airlines is completely nonrefundable.

(The website Rome2rio is the easiest way to explore public transportation schedules and prices anywhere in the world, including trains, buses, and ferries.)

The cheapest tickets on a route often include requirements like a minimum 7-day trip or an overnight Saturday stay at the destination before taking the return flight. In doing so, airlines are trying to ensure that business travelers with big budgets aren’t getting the cheap fares intended for leisure travelers. (This is also why many one-way fligh

Another factor driving fares down is the recent trend of unbundling—that is, no longer including some perks in the overall ticket price. Before 2008, almost all major airlines automatically included checked bags with your ticket. After 2008, checked bags began costing extra, and soon fees for other add-ons like advance seat selection emerged. It’s

When you’re traveling with a group, instead of just searching for the entire group, see if fares are cheaper by booking one or two tickets at a time. In summer 2019, I searched for three passengers from Portland to New York. Google Flights showed a one-way fare of $178 per ticket, an okay but not great price. When I reduced the number of passengers