Cheap Travel

Better chance of getting a window seat http://www.flickr.com/photos/bogdanmorar/

Internet Travel Deals

Cheap flights online have revolutionized the travel business and now traditional bucket flight shops are having their work cut out to make a living. Travelers can check out cheap ticket links from their own home and pay online without having to hang out to be served at the travel agency.

A few sites worth checking:

Opodo
E Dreams
Cheapoair

However, a really skilful travel agent who knows the ins and outs of various routes may still be able to get you the best price so it’s worth checking in person for some routes.

Last Minute flights

In the old days the way to get cheap flights was to head down to the airport and wait for last minute flights to come up. You didn’t know exactly where you’d be traveling but hey, that was all part of the fun of it.

Over the years though flight companies have become more and more reluctant to sell last minute empty seats at discount prices in the airport itself. Maybe they felt it damaged the value of their regular flight prices. Or maybe the airports were sick of budget travelers staked out in sleeping bags waiting for the $30 special to Mexico City.

Last minute flights are still available a few days or weeks before some flights though and these offers are generally sold though travel agents. There’s likely to be restrictions on the return date and the number of seats available but if you can find a small travel agent with an eye for a bargain you can still fly cheaply at short notice.

Student Discount Flights

If you’re below the age of 26 or you’re in full time education, then you can head down to your nearest Student Travel Agency (STA – or sometimes called STB) and get flights with a 20-30% discount. This travel agency projects an image of the wild young person on their world tour (“Experience is Everything!”).

Whilst their flights are often the cheapest as far as open return tickets go, they deal with the standard flight companies and don’t go looking for backdoor budget flights like some of the smaller travel agencies.

So what do you do if you’re over 26 and you’re not a student?

Well, not that we’d ever suggest anyone should ever go into forgery or anything but we’ve heard that all STA ask for as proof is a letter from your college. Now, we’ve also heard that if that letter is in say, Portuguese, then your average travel agent at STA isn’t going to know what it says and will just trust the letter head and the dates that he sees on the letter.

Of course, it occurs to us that, hypothetically speaking, it’s rather easy these days to head to a college’s site on the internet and borrow the logo seen there and paste it into Microsoft Word. Sadly, some travelers will stoop at nothing.

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