Method
TAKING THE POWER IN YOUR OWN HANDS
By Nicholas Kralev
“On the Fly” Seminars Founder
READ NICHOLAS’ ‘ON THE FLY’ COLUMN
Many of us like to travel. We may not do it as often as we want, because of financial and time constraints, but we enjoy visiting foreign countries — and exploring our own. It’s the getting-there part we don’t usually look forward to.
There was a time — more than a decade ago — when sitting in the coach cabin didn’t bother me too much. Planes and air travel always excited me, and the promise of what awaited at the other end of my journey left me little time for self-pity. Plus, I’d take only a couple of trips a year.
But then I began traveling around the world for work, as the Washington Times’ diplomatic correspondent, and flying between three continents in a week in coach and enduring today’s airport routine started to seem really ugly. So I decided to look for ways to travel in business class — paying for it wasn’t an option, given my budget limitations, and the only alternative was to achieve the highest elite status by flying 100,000 miles a year.
The key to the business-class door — without paying for it
At the beginning, that wasn’t too easy — it required me to fly on the same airline or its alliance partners. The global alliances — Star, Oneworld and SkyTeam — were not as big as they are today, and none of their member-carriers served some of the countries I went to. Even when they did, that option might not have been the cheapest.
With some creativity and strategic planning, however, I managed pretty well — and the benefits of top elite status changed my life. At the airport, priority lines, business lounges and red-carpet boarding have made the experience much less of a hassle. On board, I’ve enjoyed flat beds, great meals and on-demand entertainment, thanks to complimentary upgrades I’ve been able to confirm long before a flight.
The real challenge was how to maintain that combination of paying low fares and flying in luxury year after year. Since knowledge means power, I decided to take the power in my own hands and stop relying on travel agents or online booking engines to find me the best deals — by learning all I could about airfares and airline inventory, and by accessing raw, real-time airline data right from the source where it’s published.
Saving hundreds — even thousands — of dollars per ticket
Word that I’d cracked the code spread quickly among friends and colleagues, and in the last few years I’ve saved many people a lot of money. Here are just two examples:
In April, a colleague at the Times had to go to Hong Kong and asked me for help with upgrading to business class. He had just enough miles for a one-way upgrade, but his low fare required a nearly $500 co-pay. He showed me his booking, which was made by a travel agency used by the organization that was paying for the trip.
The total price was more than $2,100. It seemed higher than what I expected, and after a couple of minutes of checking my resources, I was able to get about $1,600 for the same dates, with an improved itinerary at that. Now my colleague could use the $500 I saved for the upgrade co-pay. I explained to him what I’d done and asked him to tell the travel agency exactly what booking codes to use. To my utter shock, the agency wasn’t able to get the fare I got, so it asked me to make the reservation.
Last summer, my former managing editor had to go to Mongolia at a week’s notice and asked if I could find an affordable business-class fare. A quick look at my resources showed that Korean Air offered the lowest price, at about $8,700, which was of course beyond our means. So I thought for a minute, checked a few things and got a ticket for less than $4,000 on Air Canada and Air China — after all, the Star Alliance, of which they are both members, is my specialty.
Taking full advantage of elite benefits
For those of us who can’t afford to pay for first or business class, making full use of our hard-earned elite benefits is as logical and natural as getting a seat assignment as soon as we book a flight. But there are people whose companies have no trouble buying premium tickets, and they have no incentive to learn the details of all that their status brings them.
I’ve been amazed by how many elite travelers have no idea that a dozen upgrade certificates sit unused in their accounts — what’s worse, they simply let them expire. Here’s the thing: Even if you fly on business-class tickets and that cabin is just fine for you, you can always do better and upgrade to first class. You can also gift the certificates to someone else.
Ignorance is sometimes a blessing, but in this case, loyal airline customers don’t take full advantage of the benefits that come with their top elite status. Those perks can come really handy when you go on a personal trip with your family — and they will no doubt appreciate it.
Will our seminars hurt the airlines?
I’ve been asked if I’m afraid that the airlines might come after me for revealing secrets that help travelers but not the carriers. The way I see it, by educating people how to achieve and maintain elite status, I in effect teach them how to be loyal to an airline — and that directly translates into increased revenue. The money an airline might lose as a result of a customer knowing how to save pales to what it would gain by securing his or her loyalty.
More importantly, the long-term mission of our seminars is to help as many people as possible to become better travelers. If passengers were better educated and knew exactly what they wanted from an agent, they would spend a few minutes on the phone instead of an hour, and agents would be able to help more people in less time. Increased productivity is surely good for an airline.
In addition, if travelers knew all basic fare and ticketing rules and were equipped to anticipate and better handle delays and cancellations, hopefully fewer of them would have to deal with ruined vacations and missed weddings or funerals, for which they tend to blame the airlines.
So, it’s a win-win. Did you expect me to say anything different?
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