Intro­duc­tion

Buy­ing a plane ticket isn’t quite the same busi­ness as it was when Sina­tra was croon­ing about buy­ing a ticket to Aca­pulco Bay. Peo­ple no longer dress in their Sun­day fin­ery. No one makes stops in Gan­der and the Azores any­more — the day of refu­el­ing stops ended with the appear­ance of the long range Boe­ing 707. Low-cost air­lines entered the busi­ness since South­west in 1971 and the No-Frills style of air­fare has no less than the late Sir Freddy Laker’s “Sky­train” in its pedegree.

Sav­ing money on flights has always been chal­leng­ing; the entire travel agent pro­fes­sion revolves around find­ing ways to save cash, while pro­vid­ing the best vaca­tion pos­si­ble. This busi­ness suf­fered through much shocks when the Inter­net appeared; how­ever, for those with­out any inside links or under­stand­ing, book­ing through a travel agent is still prob­a­bly one of the best ways to get a deal on a flight.

This three-part series is intended to give you a bit of an under­stand­ing so the next time you are book­ing a flight, you under­stand the dif­fer­ences between domes­tic and inter­na­tional flights, as well as the dif­fer­ences between dif­fer­ent fares. Our first part deals exclu­sively with domes­tic fares. This is based on the Cana­dian mar­ket; do not make the mis­take of assum­ing it is the same in the USA, most Euro­pean coun­tries and Japan. Canada is in the unfor­tu­nate posi­tion of hav­ing its small pop­u­la­tion spread over its vast ter­ri­tory, and as a result has few com­peti­tors in the domes­tic air­line market.

My love for flight has always been there, but being from a strictly middle-class back­ground kept me grounded. As my mom always explained to me, air­planes were very expen­sive for fam­i­lies, and we couldn’t pos­si­bly afford for us to go on those expen­sive vaca­tions that we saw on TV. Our dreams of Dis­ney­world ended at the “Wel­come to West Vir­ginia” sign, as we crawled by in our rusted up Ford Tau­rus. Of course, the real­ity was that my fam­ily didn’t know any­thing about the air­line busi­ness. The only ticket prices my mom was aware of were Karachi’s Quaid-e-Azam Inter­na­tional to Montreal’s Dor­val, not Montreal’s Dor­val (now Pierre-Elliot Trudeau Air­port) to Van­cou­ver Inter­na­tional Air­port. Unlike the cartel-dominated world of Inter­na­tional air travel, domes­tic air­fare was and still is sig­nif­i­cantly affected by low-cost air­lines that sprouted up every­where. I can’t go back in time and teach my mom the lessons I know, but I am vol­un­teer­ing this knowl­edge so that no other chil­dren are vic­tim­ized by a vaca­tion in Mor­gan­town ever again.

There are four things to take into account when try­ing to get the low­est airfare;

- sup­ply vs. demand
– the date the flight is booked
– the rigid­ity of one’s sched­ule, and
– whether you are fly­ing from the US or Canada

Notably miss­ing on this list is where you buy your ticket; con­trary to pop­u­lar opin­ion, you can­not save money on domes­tic Cana­dian plane ticket by book­ing on inde­pen­dent web­sites. If you keep these sim­ple facts in mind while book­ing, and the penny-pinchers among us should be set.

Fact 1: Book­ing a Month From Now Does Not Make It Cheaper

Most peo­ple are bound by invis­i­ble con­straints; they have a spe­cific des­ti­na­tion in mind when they leave, as well as a spe­cific time they need to be there. If you want to have any sort of peace of mind about a trip, you really do need to book in advance. How­ever for those of us with more flex­a­bil­ity, last minute book­ing can save money, espe­cially if one is pur­chas­ing straight from the air­line. Our exam­ple for this will be Mon­treal to Van­cou­ver, as it is prob­a­bly the longest (read: most expen­sive) flight avail­able in Canada. These prices were obtained on the morn­ing of Decem­ber 6th, 2006, and involved two dates

Accord­ing to Aircanada.com, I can get a flight on Decem­ber 8th on AC129 for $263.99 (Taxes included). Now when I look for the same price on Jan­u­ary 26th, 2006, it is avail­able for $347.17. Westjet.ca offers the exact same fares for Decem­ber 8th on WS629 ($263.99), and a $275.38 fare on the 26th of Jan­u­ary. On the sur­face, it is clear that you are sav­ing some dol­lars by book­ing at the last minute; what is the catch?

Well, for one, look at the times the planes leave. WS629 leaves at 5:35 PM (so you need to be there around 3:30, when rush hour traf­fic has already starte pil­ing up in Mon­treal), and arrives at 8:07 PM in Van­cou­ver. AC129 leaves at 7:55 PM (mean­ing you are going to be in the bumper-to-bumper phase when you get to the air­port). More impor­tantly, you have no choice over the time you leave; all the other timed flights are sig­nif­i­cantly more expen­sive. Plan­ning in advance costs more, but you have more con­trol over your itinerary.

Of course, your next ques­tion is prob­a­bly “Why is it cheaper??”. The answer is, of course, sup­ply and demand. Van­cou­ver has been bat­tered by rain­storms and snow­storms at the time of this writ­ing; it isn’t exactly a good time to be on the West Coast. Air­lines sell a cer­tain num­ber of seats to bulk deal­ers and base their ticket prices on sales. Clearly, sales to the west coast aren’t par­tic­u­larly strong, and are reduc­ing traf­fic on the flight. The reverse flights (from Van­cou­ver to Mon­treal) are more expen­sive, almost $240 + tax for the 8th.

Fact 2: You do not save on domes­tic flights at smaller websites.

I went ahead and checked some of the last minute travel sites for air­fare quotes. This is what I got:

Decem­ber 7th, 2006
itravel2000: $367.17 + tax
expedia.ca: $354 + tax
travelocity.ca: $350 (Tax Included)
travelmix.ca: $263.99 (Tax included)
flightcentre.ca: $262.99 (Tax Included — Appears to have been a mis­take on the site, as the taxes are $1 less than they are sup­posed to be)
flightnetwork.com: $263.99 (West­jet), $283.99 (Air Canada)
orbitz.com: $404 (Amer­i­can dollars)

Jan­u­ary 26th, 2006
flightcentre.ca: 275.38 (West­jet) and $338.38 (Air Canada) (Tax included)
travelmix.ca: $275.38 $347.14(Tax included)
travelocity.ca: $354 (West­jet) and $412 (Air Canada) (Taxes Included)
flightnetwork.com: $275.38 (Westjet)

As you can see, these prices are the same, or more, than what Air Canada and West­jet charge. Air Canada and West­jet have a delib­er­ate pol­icy of list­ing the low­est domes­tic fare on their web­site (note, this is NOT THE SAME as the low­est inter­na­tional fare; more on that in the third part of this series)

Fact 3: The United States is ALWAYS CHEAPER than Canada… except at the last minute.

The US should, log­i­cally, be cheaper than Canada. More com­pe­ti­tion, more air­lines, more sales — what isn’t there to like? Well, for one, the US has a bet­ter econ­omy, and more peo­ple move around than in Canada. As a result, the last minute sales just don’t exist; how could they when there is no excess capacity?

Look at Burling­ton -> Seat­tle (the clos­est we can get to Montreal->Vancouver) is 500 dol­lars for a last minute book­ing; US Dol­lars at that. How­ever, long term book­ings are obscenely cheap. Kayak.com has Burling­ton -> Seat­tle for $102, I have no doubt you could find some­thing cheaper if you looked. Book­ing before­hand can save you a lot of money, espe­cially if you are fly­ing out of hubs for major dis­count air­lines. This isn’t to say that money should be your only fac­tor; there has been a deep decline in cus­tomer ser­vice ever since the tragic events of 9/11. I per­son­ally have been inter­ro­gated and kept aside for a period of 4 hours (on top of the nor­mal lug­gage check-in), on a trip to Japan which only stopped for refu­el­ing in Detroit. Still, as long as you don’t have a funny middle-eastern sound­ing name like I do, you won’t share my unfor­tu­nate experience.

If the poten­tial has­sle doesn’t bother you, the ques­tion becomes “Is Burling­ton -> Seat­tle REALLY cheaper than Mon­treal -> Van­cou­ver?”. Tak­ing a flight from Mon­treal to Burling­ton flight is out of the ques­tion, because you have to pay the air­port taxes (which is what hob­bles most Cana­dian flights, includ­ing Mon­treal -> Van­cou­ver). The train is out of the ques­tion as well; I am well versed with tak­ing VIA and trust me when I say that it is not the “cheap­er” way to go, by any sense of the word. Tak­ing your car to Burling­ton from Mon­treal costs about $40–60 in gas, but then you need to arrange for park­ing. Assum­ing you have no fam­ily in the area, this could eas­ily cost a lot.

The cheap­est way to spend those two hours get­ting there is to leave by Grey­hound, and it costs $32 Amer­i­can. The flight from Burling­ton to Seat­tle costs the afore­men­tioned $102 (USD taxes included). The bus stop (345 Pine Street) is about 4 miles away from Burling­ton Air­port; let’s say a $10 taxi fare. It works out to $165 Amer­i­can, and 3 extra hours. Of course, this assumes the bus gets you there in time (The only daily bus arrives at 2:15 PM, which is good for any flight that leaves around 4:30 PM). There are sev­eral buses from Seat­tle Air­port to Van­cou­ver, and they all cost approx­i­mately $40. This brings you up to $205 Amer­i­can, and another 2 hours. Fac­tor­ing in every­thing, it is $220 Cana­dian, which is about 55$ cheaper than the cheap­est flight in Canada. Although it might not seem like much, remem­ber that this is a 20% sav­ings over fly­ing in Canada, with all expenses fac­tored in. In short, if money is a big­ger prob­lem than time, it is worth it to fly through the US when book­ing in advance. This is dou­bly true when fly­ing to the US, a sit­u­a­tion we will cover in the next article.

Con­clu­sion:

There ARE ways to save money in flight, even in the money-dry world of Cana­dian avi­a­tion. Whether you are in Mon­treal, Que­bec, or Inu­vik, NWT, the plan­ning and thought you bring to book­ing your flight will pay div­i­dends. Even in the busy vaca­tion time, a lit­tle fore­sight can yield great div­i­dends. Now, admit­tedly, this is of lim­ited use. After all, like I said, all my vaca­tions as a kid were in the US; how can a fam­ily save money going to Florida or Hawaii? Our next part will deal exclu­sively with Canada -> US travel, and some sur­pris­ing sto­ries of how you can get your fam­ily to Florida with­out hav­ing to take out some of that home equity.