Winter in Amsterdam: siebe (flickr)

It’s now October, the “summer or high” travel season has now officially come to a close, and we find ourselves at the beginning of the “winter or low” travel season. Fewer people travel during this time as the temperature drops across the Northern Hemisphere. However, for those who do decide to travel internationally, they are often rewarded with dramatically reduced airfares by commercial airlines.

We all know that it’s cheaper to travel to Europe in the winter than in the summer. But by how much? Does the drop in price really justify battling the European winter? And what about destinations in Asia, Africa, the Pacific, or Latin America? Do they experience similar drops in airfare?

Yesterday, I spent a good portion of time playing around with Farecompare’s Cheapest Airfare Search Tool and have come up with a rough guide as to which airports and countries experience the greatest drop in airfare during the winter months when compared to their cheapest summer prices. The guide is based on airfare using New York City as the city of origin, and tracks the low winter airfare in comparison with peak summer fares. I realize that not all US travelers use New York as their home airport, but the airfare price trends from NYC are the same ones that you will experience from your home airport, so it makes for a good index airport. The goal of this guide is to determine how much you can actually save by traveling in the winter as opposed to the summer, so that budget travelers can decide if the drop in price justifies a trip in the winter, or if they would rather wait and pay extra for summer travel.

A note to my European, Australian, and other Global readers:
Unforunately, Farecompare’s search tool only works when travel originates or ends in the United States, so I could not put together a similar guide for other global hubs. You can still use the guide as a general description of yearly airfare trends, but any information inferred should be checked against your local air hub.

Regional Airfare Trends (Winter vs. Summer pricing):

*New York’s JFK used as airport of origin

Local Airfare Trends (Winter vs. Summer pricing):

*New York’s JFK used as airport of origin

In 1914 an ingenious young aviator by the name of Lawrence Sperry, introduced a revolutionary new invention to the aviation world: the autopilot. Sperry, a selfless man, did not work tirelessly on the perfection of his new invention for money or fame. No, his was a much more noble cause.

Lawrence Sperry devoted his time and effort into the invention, so that in November of 1916 he could truly change the world, and become the very first member of the Mile High Club, engaging in sexual activity in his own plane while flying over Babylon, New York. On this historic occasion, Sperry changed the face of Air-Travel in America forever, and will always be remembered as an innovator and leader in American Aeronautics.

The preceding is based on fact from Wikipedia.org, however the actual motives for Sperry’s autopilot invention have been fictionalized.

The Mile High Club:

Ever since Lawrence Sperry founded the club in 1916, it’s become very well-known across the United States and even the world. Membership generally includes having sex in an aircraft at an altitude over 5,280ft.

The difficulty in joining the club is that the majority of us fly on commercial airlines, in which cramped lavatories are the only truly private areas, and where pushy flight attendants are often attuned to your every move. The legalities of joining the club are hazy (BBC: Is sex on a plane legal?), but at the very least you can be guaranteed a little embarrassment if caught.

For this reason, a number of charter flight companies have begun setting up private charters targeted at individuals who want to join the club, but don’t feel comfortable doing so on a commercial airline. The charter company generally offers about one hour of flight time, a bottle of champagne, and a “discreet pilot”. For the duration of the flight the cabin is yours, free to do whatever your hearts desire!

When I first heard about these companies I assumed they charge a hefty fee for their services. However, the flights are actually pretty reasonably priced, and can run as low as $220 per hour (flights generally run for one hour, unless more time is requested).

Maybe this is your cup of tea, maybe it isn’t. But I know you’re interested in learning more, so check out the following Mile High Charters:

Aero-Tech, Inc.
For the low price of $250, this Kentucky based operator will take you on a 1 hour Mile High Club flight.

Mile High Atlanta
Run out of Atlanta, Mile High Atlanta offers 1 hour Mile High flights for $299. Participants are even sent home with their sheets as a keepsake.

Flamingo Air Inc.
Based out of Cincinnati, offers 1 hour Mile High flights with champagne and chocolates for $299.

Mile High Flights (UK)
Based out of the United Kingdom, Mile High Flights offers packages ranging from £250-£750, depending on the duration of the flight, and level of luxury.

Chicagoland Skydiving Center
Run out of Chicago, they offer one hour Mile High Flights for $999. The price is high, but that’s because the charter is not aboard a small 6-10 passenger plane, but rather a 20 passenger “Boom Boom Plane” that’s over 20 feet in length, giving your plenty of room to “maneuver” around!

Note:

The following advice is mainly applicable to travelers looking to either start or end their travel in North America.

Budget travelers have a unique advantage over other types of travelers, as in most cases we are extremely flexible when it comes to making plans for travel. There are very few places on the planet we wouldn’t like to visit at least once, and if the price is right we are usually willing to take off any time of year.

While most budget travelers abide by this philosophy, I am often surprised to see that more budget travelers don’t use this flexibility to save themselves money. While the airline industry has made a science out of screwing people over who need to fly on specific dates, the flexible traveler can often find hundreds of great deals every month if they take advantage of their flexibility. The problem in the past was that nobody, not even budget travelers, had time to check internet airline fares every single day to hundreds of different destinations around the world for hundreds of different date combinations. In this situation the airlines won out, charging high fares for popular travel dates, and making it too difficult to stay on top of more flexible options. However, today things are different. There are now a number of services available on the web that take all the work out of monitoring flexible airfares, and pass that information on to you.

How it works:

The basic idea here is that airfares go on sale every single day. Sometimes these discounts are negligible, but sometimes the fare drops as much as 50%. The problem is that, usually, the only people that notice cheap fares are the people that were already looking to travel to that destination on those particular dates. This is because most travelers choose a destination and time frame first, then search for flights. Budget travelers, however, are different. We’ll go pretty much anywhere, and are usually willing to go at any time of year. This gives us a great edge in taking advantage of discounted airline fares, if only we can stay abreast of all the deals.

Requirements to using flexibility to get cheap airfares:

The only real requirement, is that you must truly be flexible. You can still use the following advice if you are not a flexible traveler, but you will really limit yourself as to the number of deals you can take advantage of if you are not willing to travel any time of the year (many great discounts can be found in low season) and to anywhere on the globe (not just Europe, N. America, and Australia).

The Services:

As I stated in the disclaimer above, the following two services are best used if you are traveling either to or from North America. You will only be able to use FareCompare.com if either your origin or destination city is in North America, and while you can use Kayak.com for searches outside of North America, they do not currently include many of the European and Asian discount operators in their search, which means you will not always be informed of the cheapest fares available.

Kayak’s Buzz: Kayak.com’s Buzz feature is a great tool for monitoring airfares around the world. All you do is register to Kayak’s website and input the fares you would like to track. Kayak will then contact you with the frequency you request for all fares that fall under a particular price level that you set. You can track specific point to point itineraries, for example I track fares from Quito, Ecuador to Washington DC. Or you can track fares from a specific city to an entire region, or popular cities around the world. I currently track fares from Washington DC and New York to Europe and Asia. Every couple of days I receive an email from Kayak informing me of the recent deals that have been found for the itineraries I am interested in. The big downside to Kayak’s service is that it only recognizes low fares to add to its Buzz database AFTER they have been searched for by another user. This means that you may not hear about a discount fare for a few days after it has been released because no Kayak users have searched for it. This also means that a range of dates for which the low fare is offered is not available, only the specific dates that other users have searched for.

Sign Up:

1. Go to Kayak.com, and click on register in the upper right hand corner
2. Fill in the registration page
3. Confirm your email address
4. Sign in to your new account and click on the “Buzz” link at the top of the page
5. Create the fare alerts you want to track, specifying origin, destination, max price, and how often you’d like to receive email alerts
6. Sit back and let the low fares come to you

Farecompare: Farecompare is a new site with a fantastic feature for tracking discounted airfares. The system works much like Kayak’s in that you sign-up, list the itineraries you are interested in tracking, and sit back and wait for them to contact you with great fares. The difference is that while Kayak only reports fares that have already been searched by other users, Farecompare automatically performs it’s own comprehensive searches for all destinations and dates to compile a list that is more accurate and up-to-date than Kayak’s. In fact, because Farecompare works so closely with the airlines, they are actually able to release discounted fares before the airlines themselves do. By staying on top of Farecompare’s listings, customers can ensure they are the first to hear about hot new fares, and can be first in line to purchase, as opposed to finding out a few days later after all the cheap tickets have already sold out.

Sign Up:

1. Go to the Farecompare.com homepage, and enter your email address to signup for “Airfare Deal Alerts” (right side of the screen)
2. You will then be taken to your personal Email Alerts Summary page (no email confirmation required)
3. Create the fare alerts you want to track
4. Sit back and let the low fares come to you

The Question?

We’ve all heard the legends. New York to Amsterdam - $100, London to Cape Town - $150, Los Angeles to Bangkok - FREE! Back in the day (about 10 years ago) these were the airfares commonly taken advantage of by a very “hush, hush” crowd called air couriers. They got their savings by giving up their checked baggage allowance and transporting mail for an international courier company. For anyone that could be flexible with their travel plans, and didn’t mind traveling light, it was an amazing deal.

Unfortunately, however, all things change. Global shipping companies have made great advancements in efficiency, pricing, and speed of shipping. Also, in the post 9/11 world, courier companies face much stricter regulations and a have a lot more red tape to bypass to accomplish their job. This makes it much more difficult to move goods quickly, and makes it harder for them to effectively provide their services. So, the big question is: Is it still possible to fly for pennies as an air courier, or has this opportunity gone by the wayside in today’s modern world?

The Answer:

The answer to the question is YES, it is still possible to find great savings on air travel by traveling as an air courier. I’ve spent the past week doing a lot of research on this topic, and it seems clear that this is hardly the industry that it once was, but it is still out there, and still possible to find very discounted flights. Through my research, I found that the majority of companies that were involved in the air courier business in the late 1990’s have now either closed down, or switched their focus to another aspect of the transport industry. This tells us one thing: today there is far less demand for their services. However, not everyone has closed up shop, so there is still some demand out there, which means that it is still possible to use courier flights as a great way to save.

The big problem with courier flights for prospective couriers today, is there just aren’t as many opportunities as there used to be. Basically, the opportunities to fly courier are from the US to Asia, or from London to Asia, with occasional flights between the US (mainly the East Coast) and Europe (mainly London). You are usually allowed to spend up to 30 days in your destination, and then are expected to return on another courier run. Obviously you must be very flexible in planning flights, must be able to travel light (as you will lose your checked baggage allowance as shipping space for the courier company), and you have to be willing to wait for an open opportunity to present itself (which you may have to take advantage of with last minute notice). If you think you meet these requirements, you should be able to find what you are looking for in a courier flight, if not, you would probably be better off just searching consolidators and online sites for the best fares.

How much can I actually save?

While there aren’t as many courier opportunities out there as there used to be, the ones that ARE available, still pass great savings on to the courier. The following are standard courier fares that I found in contacting a few courier companies that are still in business:

All fares are roundtrip and are current for the Summer of 2007. They also, supposedly, include taxes and fees, but I have not yet been able to verify that statement.

• New York - Bangkok: $450

• Los Angeles - Hong Kong: $250
• Los Angeles - Singapore: $250
• San Francisco - Manila: $450

• London - Bangkok: £420

• London - Tokyo: £450
• London - NY: £220
• London - Miami: £265

How to get more information?

If you are interested in learning a little more about courier flights, I recommend you contact a few of the companies that offer them, so you can get a little more information specific to your particular situation and needs.

There are a number of agencies out there that work as booking agents for courier companies. In my research I only found one that is still involved in this field of work, and that is reputable: International Association of Air Travel Courier (IAATC). They charge a $45 annual fee for their services. In my research I joined the IAATC to find out first hand what they had to offer. While they do maintain an up-to-date list of courier flights currently available, and their prices, they do not actually do any of the work in arranging said flights. They just offer contact information for the courier company itself, so that prospective couriers can arrange the flight directly with the company. Also, with the reduced demand for courier flights these days, they only list flights for a handful of courier companies. For this reason, I would recommend against joining a booking organization like the IAATC, and just contacting individual courier companies on your own, for free.

As I have said above, there are really just a few courier companies still out there. My recommendation is to just contact them directly, tell them what you are looking for, and stay in contact with them for a few months to see if anything pops up.

Here are two to get you started:

Jupiter Air
1-310-670-1197
courier@jupiterair.com
*Operate out of the US

British Airways Travel Shops
00-44-(0)-870-606-1133
*Operate out of Great Britain