Booking Flights - Part 1

In order to scrap photos from an awesome trip, you first have to get there, right?  Today I'm going to talk about booking flights.  I want to say up front that I am not a travel agent, so the info I'm passing along here is totally from my own trial and error and things I've read/researched over the years.

1.  Managing your research time:  Nobody wants to spend hours and hours looking for flight options on 10 different airlines.  So, I highly suggest using a fare alert tool.  There are quite a few out there, but my favorite is Airfarewatchdog.  It allows you to search for flights right now, but it also gives you the option to set up fare alerts for certain cities/destinations.  I love this feature, as I can just put in several options, save them, and forget about it!  I don't have to really think about it again (unless I want to) until I get the email alerting me that there's a price of interest on the cities I indicated.  Be aware, though, that you can only do alerts for domestic US travel or from the US to an overseas destination; you cannot use this site for flights that are from one point in Europe to another (example: Dublin to Paris).

2.  Be flexible:  I have a fairly flexible schedule.  I can't completely ignore the hours I have to devote to my "real job", but since I work mostly from home, I have a great deal of flexibility for travel.  One of the best pieces of advice I can give is to not lock yourself into only one specific date to leave and one date to come back home.  If you're stuck on a specific date, this will very much limit your options for finding good flights.  Also, consider multiple airports!  As an example, when I recently flew to Europe, my ultimate destination was Edinburgh.  However, I didn't limit myself to only using the airport in Edinburgh.  I set alerts for London (all 3 airports), Edinburgh, and Glasgow.  I was flexible enough with my plans that I was willing to take a train, if the price was right, from any of the other locations in order to end up in Edinburgh.  I scored a flight on Icelandair from Minneapolis (my home base) to London, with an added lovely 1 day stopover in Reykjavik on the way back. Price?  $405.

3.  Layovers/Stopovers:  I used to prefer direct flights, at least when leaving the United States.  When I took a trip to London and Paris in 2013, I actually flew into Heathrow and out of Charles De Gaulle because I could get direct flights both ways.  This is usually much easier to do when flying between the East Coast and Europe, but there are some direct options right from Minneapolis.  At that time, I didn't have any other destinations for my trip, so it fit what I wanted.  Now, however, my travel goals and style have changed a bit.  I have another trip to Europe coming up in a few months; my ultimate destination is Ireland, but I knew that I had some wiggle room on time/days, and I wanted to see where I might be able to stop along the way.  My mindset is that if I'm spending the time and money to cross an ocean, I'm going to get the most out of it that I can!  In this case, it did require more research to figure out how to combine a good stopping point and then an extra flight to get me to Ireland.  (Knowing the cheaper carriers within Europe helps for this.)  I ended up choosing to take a long layover in Amsterdam both ways, since I've never been there.  I will have time on my way over and on the way back to explore some of Amsterdam.  Will I be tired?  Of course!  But the price... $419 for my first leg and 100 euro for the second.

Stay tuned for the second part of this discussion on finding flights that work for what you want without breaking the bank.