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| Noosaville seen from the River, Noosaville, Queensland, Australia |
Once you have gathered all relevant information, it is time to make your draft flight itinerary. Remember, the direct route may not necessarily be the cheapest! But there's more to that, most often the cheapest flights also involve flying out or getting into an airport that is not necessarily in your city of departure or destination.
In 2014, I visited my sister who lives in Abu Dhabi, UAE. Instead of watching out for a direct Manila - Abu Dhabi flight which are rare and expensive, I watched out for the Manila - Dubai ones. Dubai is some relatively comfortable 3-hr bus ride away from Abu Dhabi.
In my trip to Lao PDR last year, I did not fly from Iloilo to Manila and onward, I flew from Kalibo (Boracay) although it is a 4-hr bus ride away from Iloilo. Why? Because Kalibo has a direct AirAsia service to Kuala Lumpur, it cuts my number of flights by ditching a domestic connexion!
When I went to Brisbane this year, I again ditched Manila in favour of a direct CebuPacific service from Iloilo to Singapore and there made a connexion via FlyScoot to Gold Coast, a city 45-min away from Brisbane. That has saved me two domestic flight connexions, the Iloilo to Manila and the Sydney to Brisbane flights. This was important because, while it is easy to find cheap Manila-Sydney flights because of CebuPacific, domestic flights in Australia are generally more expensive.
Usually I make two to three draft flight itineraries; sometimes it can go up to four or five, because sometimes a sub-itinerary exists and it depends on whether I'd like to linger for a day or two in a lay-over destination.
Keep these itineraries handy so when that seat sale you've been waiting for comes around, you can easily remember what flights to watch out!
Step 7: Set-up a Budget Range
The draft itineraries from Step 6 must carry with it a budget range. A common sense approach to this is to set the price of a direct or connecting flight of either Philippine Airlines (PAL) or of the destination's flag carrier as the ceiling. For example, whenever I go to Malaysia, I check first the full cost of a flight from Iloilo to Kuala Lumpur via Manila with PAL or by making a connecting flight, PAL for the domestic leg and Malaysian Airlines for the international one. This is not the flight I am going to book, this is just the ceiling price! Whenever I check the flight prices in my other itinerary-options, I will compare them to this ceiling price.
How do you set the floor price? When a seat sale occurs, but they sell tickets on days I am not available to take a trip, I still look into the prices. I may not buy these tickets but, these sale prices gives me the floor price for the flights to my dream destination.
Now, the difference between the floor and ceiling prices you have is the budget-range! The flights to your dream destination must fall within this range. There is close to nil chances you will get any lower than the floor-price, so you do not wait for the miracle that may not happen when you get the flight of your dreams for 1-peso. Neither should you ever, in your right senses, book a flight to your dreams with prices above your ceiling unless you just won the lottery jackpot!
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| The author at Roma Street Parklands, Brisbane, Australia. |
Here's a more detailed example of how to set the budget range.
Let's take my route to Brisbane, Australia from Iloilo City, Philippines. To set the ceiling, I check Philippine Airlines (PAL) pricing. A connecting round-trip ILO-MNL-BNE v.v. costs PhP 45,000. To countercheck that, I also check QANTAS which offers a MNL-SYD-BNE v.v. flight at around PhP 40,000, but since this does not yet include yet an ILO-MNL v.v. connexion I have to add around PhP 4,500 to that, or roughly PhP 44,500. Thus it is safe to set PhP 45,000 as the ceiling price for a flight from my hometown to Brisbane, Australia.
We also need to set the floor price. CebuPacific normally from time to time offers a seat sale of PhP 4,999 one-way fare Manila to Sydney. The same airline offers on sale one-way Iloilo to Manila fares at around PhP899. Back in Australia, I remember fares from Sydney to Brisbane can get as low as PhP 1,600. So for a round-trip itinerary ILO-MNL-SYD-BNE v.v., the sale fares should fall to as low as, PhP 14,996 or let's round that to PhP 15,000. This is now the floor-price. I am not saying it cannot get any cheaper than this, just that the chance of getting cheaper prices is statistically low.
From the sample calculation above, the budget range for a trip from Iloilo to Brisbane is PhP 15,000 to PhP 45,000.
Step 8: Seizing the Opportunity
Once you have the budget range you are ready to scavenge the web for the best value for your trip. I make a 5 colour code for this cost-to-opportunity comparisons that I'm going to share here:
Blue - ticket prices are 80 - 100% of the range.
Red - ticket prices are 60 - 79% from the floor price;
Orange - ticket prices are 40 - 59% from the floor price;
Yellow - ticket prices are 20 - 39% from the floor price; and,
Green - ticket prices are 0 - 19% from the floor price;
photo above, the Karaweik Palace at Kandawgyi Nature Park, Bahan Township, Yangon, Myanmar.
Ordinarily, the excitement begins at the Orange-bracket and increases as they fall further into the Yellow and Green brackets. Ordinarily too however, the availability of tickets at each range decreases from Blue (which is available all year round) to Green (which is available only on promotional dates). Seizing the right opportunity is a play between wanting to wait for prices to go lower and the amount of time you are willing to spend before you finalise your travel plan.
I'll give here an example of how this works. The price range for a trip to Brisbane from Iloilo, from our example of Step 7, is PhP 15,000 to PhP 45,000. This means that we can breakdown the range into the 5-colour scheme as follows:
Blue - PhP 39,000 - PhP 45,000;
Red - PhP 33,000 - PhP 38,999;
Orange - PhP 27,000 - PhP 32,999;
Yellow - PhP 21,000 - PhP 26,999; and,
Green - PhP 15,000 - PhP 20,999;
In my personal experience, Yellow and Green codes are opportunities that should be seized!
Step 9: Check for Hidden Costs
The seasoned traveller knows there's are a lot more to consider than just a ticket-price. The following is a list of hidden costs to consider.
Philippine Travel Tax. All departing non-OFW Philippine nationals and residents residing in the Philippines in the last 24-mos. has to pay a non-refundable PhP 1,670 travel tax, if the flight is economy and PhP 2,400 if the flight is business/first class.
Terminal Fees. Unless flying-out of NAIA 1, 2 and 3, airports around the Philippines charge a terminal fee of PhP 550 - 700 for internationally-bound pasengers depending on the airport; I had a bad experience of this twice! On my first solo travel to Myanmar, the terminal fee inclusion in flight leaving NAIA was just a recent change. I forgot that I had booked my ticket 5 months before when tickets did not yet include terminal fees. My wallet only had Ringgit Melayu and US green backs, so when I was about to clear immigration I was struck when I was stopped by an airport staff telling me that I had yet to pay my terminal fee! Good thing the counter accepted credit cards, so I ended up paying my terminal fee in plastic. My second experience was worse, on my way to Kuala Lumpur via Kalibo Airport. I forgot to include terminal fees again in my consideration so when I reached Kalibo, I only had PhP 100 in my wallet, everything else were in foreign currency. When I finished checking-in, I was again stopped by an airport staff telling me I have yet to pay my terminal fee again! Worse, when I got to the counter, they did not accept credit cards. I actually had to rush again back to Kalibo town proper which is some 10-min from the airport, withdraw money from my ATM, and then go back to the airport to pay and finally clear immigrations. Good thing I was 1-hr early for my flight, so I had the luxury of 20-mins of going to and back from downtown to withdraw cash.
Luggage allowance. The advent of the budget-carrier model normalised ticket prices that do not include the fee for check-in luggage, so be careful. On a similar situation, I have had a sad experience on my way home from Brisbane in 2015, I am so used to Philippine Civil Aviation regulations that limit check-in luggages according to weight ONLY. This means, if your ticket includes a 30kg luggage allowance, it does not matter how many pieces of bags you have for as long as the total weight of all bags is 30kg. Australian regulations are quite different, it limits luggage not only by weight but also by piece! So in Australia your ticket gives you an allowance of 1-pc of check-in luggage not exceeding 23kg in weight. Unmindful of this, I brought two check-in luggages one weighing 11kg and another weighing 9kg fully believing I was within in my limitation, the end result, I had to pay an excess baggage fee of AU$ 40 for the second luggage which weighed only 9kg!
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| Singapore's Marina taken during my 19-hr lay-over there last Winter |
Lay-over Expenses. My travels across SEA usually involves long lay-overs in either Singapore's Changi or KL's KLIA, in fact I have come to love long lay-overs! Be mindful however that a lay-over translates into expenses while on the airport, and if there's anything fact about airports, it is that prices of everything is way higher there! Normally, I give myself an allowance of US$ 2 to 4 per hour of lay-over, which I usually juggle between, airport meals, water/beverages, left-luggage service and airport hotel/lounge access.
This is not an exhaustive listing of all other hidden expenses that a traveller must be familiar, and every trip, every destinations has its own peculiarities to consider. It is enough that travellers should be forewarned and must always give allowance to hidden charges.
Step 10: Minimise Risks
The final step in getting that best-value fare to your dream destination is minimising foreseeable risks. These days, promo-priced ticket actually comes with a catch, they are inflexible. The passenger cannot transfer them to another passengers name, they can also not rebook, reroute or cancel them without a fee that is normally more expensive than the ticket itself. This is one of the risks you should protect yourself from. Sure, booking way ahead of your scheduled trip will get you those cheap tickets, but if your plans are not as crystal clear, or you will not take steps to ensure no unforeseen situation arises that will prevent you from using your tickets, you might as well kiss good bye to your money spent on them.
Remember, the longer your travel dates are from your purchase date, the more flexibility you need. I usually do not advise booking any tickets further than 6-months ahead of scheduled departure, unless the price is something I am willing to let go, should I be unable to use them. The rule of thumb I use is to purchase tickets for use within 4 to 16 weeks.
Connexions involving different airlines is another major risk factor that needs to be considered. Airlines usually do not consider it as an excuse when a traveller is not able to fly their flight because they are connecting from another airline which got delayed, unless the connexion is issued under one booking via some partnership of the two different airlines. When my itinerary includes a connexion in between two different airlines, I normally put at least 6-hrs in between them, I went even as far as 19-hrs, but that was because my itinerary really included a leisurely lay-over at Singapore. I really planned to get out of Changi by 6AM to explore the city for one entire day before re-entering the airport sometime after 7PM.
In cases of flight cancellations by the airline, like because of sanctioned industrial action, or bad weather, this is where your back-up itineraries will come in handy. As you negotiate with your airline for alternative flights, your back-up itineraries will help you guide the best possible bargains you will demand from your airline. On my way home from Sydney this year, my flight to Manila was delayed by 6-hrs., this delay would have meant I will miss my Manila to Iloilo connexion which was fortunately under the same airline. When I telephoned the airline's hotline, it was very easy for me to bargain a free rebooking from them because I already knew their flight schedule and so I knew which flight can I go to next.
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| Shops at Kingsford Smith Airport, Sydney, Australia taken during my long lay-over there because of a flight-delay |
For all other unforeseeable events, it is always best to get your flight insured as a way of blanket-protecting your flight. I rarely see online interfaces for ticket bookings nowadays that does not feature an insurance add-on. Yes it is an additional cost, but this additional cost may just be your saviour when an unavoidable situation arises. Most travel insurances nowadays will cover "inability to proceed with the trip" which means they will refund the cost of your flight if you are unable to fulfil your dream vacation because of situations like death of a near-kin. They also cover situations like lost or stolen passports, missed connexion, and other undesirable events that may turn your dream vacation into a nightmare.
The added cost of insurance may in the end save you from even more expensive surprise expenses brought about by circumstances beyond your control.
Conclusion
As you travel more and more, you will begin to believe that getting bargain and best-value airfares for your trips are not really determined by sheer luck. With the right planning and careful execution, these airfares are really at your fingertips.
