Mistake Fares – Seat 31B

A Trip To Christmas Island

September 24, 2019September 24, 2019 TProphet1 Comment

Part 1: Planning

Earlier this year, Qantas ran a crazy sale on flights to Australia. I was able to score a $550 roundtrip on their A380 from Vancouver to Sydney. These weren’t nonstop flights (the outbound was from Dallas and the return was to Los Angeles), and Vancouver isn’t exactly a convenient airport for me to use given that I live in the Seattle area, but the savings were worth it—especially since the over 16,000 miles of flying credits at 100% to Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan. I typically aim for 2.4 cents per point in fully loaded value from my Alaska Airlines points, and I’m regularly able to achieve this. So, it was like paying $75 each way. To Sydney, Australia.

Then, from a miles and points perspective, things got even better. Alaska ran a double miles promo for flights on Qantas, meaning that I’d get 200% mileage credit for these flights. When combined with the small mileage credit I received for my positioning flight on American, this $550 ticket scored me a massive points haul of 32,614 Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan miles. The way I spend them, it’s $783 in value, so in effect, Alaska Airlines paid me $233 to go to Australia. I don’t have any elite status with Alaska (most of my flights are paid for with miles and points, not cash) but if I had, I could have scored a nice tier bonus on top of this.

The catch was that August is winter in Australia, the weather isn’t great in Sydney, and the sale fare wasn’t available to other Australian destinations. Australian friends warned me that it’d be cold, so I looked into flying onward from Sydney to warmer destinations. I have been on an island kick lately, most recently visiting The Seychelles. I also have a trip booked to Providencia later next year. So when I started researching Australian island destinations, Christmas Island caught my eye.

The majority of Christmas Island is a national park

The island is most famous for its red land crab migration, which occurs during the rainy season. Millions of them swarm the beaches and cover them (along with the roads), basically creating a river of crabs. I wouldn’t be visiting at the right time of year for that, but I would be visiting early enough to disconnect from the Internet. Christmas Island is one of the few places in the world still connected only by satellite (a fiber optic connection to Singapore is currently under construction). Also, there are only two flights a week. So it definitely checked my box of “not reachable from work.” When I’m on vacation, I like to truly unplug, which, given the ubiquity of the Internet, is really difficult to do these days.

I scheduled a day in Sydney and an overnight in Perth en route (to allow recovery time for missed connections–this is super important when visiting a place where there only two flights per week), and booked my onward flights. Flights to Christmas Island are very expensive on Virgin Australia on their fully economy class configured aircraft, but I was able to book this flight with 45,000 Delta SkyMiles. I also needed to get from Sydney to Perth in order to catch my flight, so ended up using American Airlines AAdvantage points for this. Domestic flights on Qantas within Australia in economy class cost 10,000 AAdvantage points each way. I also received a 2000 mile rebate on the roundtrip using a now-discontinued Citi credit card benefit, so I ended up paying 18,000 miles plus about $40 in taxes.

Continue to Part 2 – Qantas A380 Economy Class Review

I Just Booked My Cheapest Ever Flight To China

April 24, 2018April 25, 2018 TProphet3 Comments

I lived in Beijing for 3 years, so have a lot of friends and former colleagues there. And with a bit of extra time in my schedule, I decided to consider taking a week to catch up with my former life in Beijing. Spring isn’t the best time to visit, because there are often dust storms, but it’s also not a terrible time to visit because it isn’t too hot there yet.

Naturally, I default to using miles and points for trips rather than cash, so I went ahead and put a decent itinerary with American Airlines on hold. However, I really don’t enjoy flying them. The cabin configuration in economy class is more or less intentionally miserable. Also, if you book inside of 21 days with AAdvantage points, you have to pay a close-in booking fee. I could avoid that by using Alaska points, but Alaska points are so valuable for other flights that I really hate to burn them on American flights at the same redemption rate.

So, I decided to check cash fares. I like using Momondo, which often uncovers cheap fares. However, I wasn’t really prepared for just how cheap the lowest fare (by more than $200) was: $479. Of course, this wasn’t a nonstop flight on a well-known airline. It wasn’t even a one-stop flight on a well-known airline. It was a two stop flight with a forced overnight on the virtually unpronounceable Xiamen Air.

Of course, a forced overnight wasn’t really a great deal if I had to pay for hotels along the way. China is a surprisingly expensive destination and hotels would cost me a minimum of about $50 overnight.

However, Xiamen competes with Hainan Airlines, who provides free transit hotels for people who get stuck with a forced overnight in Beijing. I thought there was a possibility that Xiamen provided transit hotels, which would make the all-in pricing competitive (and help to justify the two-connection, 29 hour itinerary required to fly them to Beijing), so I called their customer service number.

The first time I called their customer service number, I sat on hold for a long time, and was abruptly informed by a recording that “we are busy at this time, please call again later.” The call then disconnected! I called again, and a very patient agent answered all of my questions.

She was able to see the same fare as me, but not with the same routing. Instead, the routing would have had me leaving Fuzhou in the late morning and I wouldn’t have gotten to Beijing until the following afternoon (two calendar days, mind you, after leaving Seattle). On the way back, I’d leave Beijing late, arrive in Xiamen really late, and then fly out super early in the morning the following day to catch my flight in Shenzhen. This itinerary (and similar ones) was also available on the Chase portal, which would have allowed me to spend just over 30,000 Ultimate Rewards points for this itinerary at 1.5 cents per point.

However, I kept searching around online travel agencies and finally found a somewhat better itinerary on the worst of them: CheapOAir. I really hate using this agency, because they don’t honor the standard 24 hour cancellation policy the airlines do (even if you made a booking 5 minutes ago in error, they still charge a $75 “agency fee” to change or cancel it). However, they are independent of Expedia and Priceline (the two companies that own the largest online travel agencies), and they negotiate with airlines directly. This means that they can get access to inventory that other travel sites don’t have. And in this case, their inventory–for the same price–gave me a much more reasonable (but still terrible) itinerary.

I had a lot of questions for the agent. She explained that the free transit hotel applied with the following conditions:

Xiamen flights only, no codeshares
6-24 hour layover at Xiamen hub of Fuzhou, Shenzhen or Xiamen
Can be requested only upon arrival at Xiamen airport, no advance booking
Not applicable for class of service G, O, X, Z, E

However, she also stated that flights laying over in Shenzhen or Fuzhou would qualify. That being said, she wasn’t sure whether a hotel could be provided in Fuzhou on the itinerary she was contemplating if I changed to it in Shenzhen, because it would be considered a domestic flight.

Is a transit hotel included? We’ll see.

The ticket I bought is for the absolute cheapest economy class fare. It’s an “S” fare, which is so cheap that no mileage credit is awarded for it in any program. It’s so cheap that the paid fare was about the same as the fuel surcharge would have been if I had redeemed Delta miles for this flight. Basically, it’s so cheap that there’s no conceivable way that Xiamen Air is making money, even if they flew me there in a jumpseat attached to the airplane toilet door and fed me gruel with sawdust and only water to drink.

Nevertheless, this ticket, on paper, qualifies for a transit hotel. I can’t wait to see whether I actually get it, or if I do, what it’s really like (I have stayed in some really awful hotels in China–will I become reacquainted with Zhang the Cockroach?). But at only $479, there are enough savings built into the itinerary that I can spring for a hotel along the way if I need to do so (if Xiamen Air is anything like China Eastern, I am pretty well assured that nothing promised–especially with as weak a promise as Xiamen Air provides–will actually be delivered). I did put the airfare on my Chase Sapphire Reserve, so there’s a possibility I could try to claim trip interruption insurance if Xiamen Air strands me (although this situation seems pretty clearly not covered, there are stories of people having success with questionable claims).

Oh, and seating? I could select from any middle seat I wanted. This will be a true Seat 31B itinerary. I’m taking off May 5th. Stay tuned!

The Open Jaw Jam

May 3, 2015May 3, 2015 TProphet0 comment

I’m getting ready to embark on another crazy itinerary. Next week, I leave for Europe. Hopefully everything goes according to plan.

A few months ago, in the frequent flier program of a small airline, there was an incredible sale fare on flights to Turkey. You could book flights to one specific airport for the same number of points as a domestic trip within the US would cost. I happened to have points with this small airline, so I booked two trips. The last trip I took apparently got me added to a TSA watch list, but it did get me to our office in Zagreb cheaply. Well, glutton for punishment that I am, I’m doing it all again.

Unfortunately I ran into a snag this time. I wasn’t able to find any availability back to the US from Zagreb on points. It’s incredibly challenging to find transatlantic award availability. This is the type of scenario in which you want as many options and as many different kinds of points as possible. Unfortunately, the only points that I had in any significant quantity, which didn’t involve fuel surcharges originating from Europe, were Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan miles. And these only didn’t involve fuel surcharges if I booked on American Airlines, a nearly impossible task.

A ton of searching later and I found a way back–but it was awful. I’d have to fly from Milan to Miami, stop over for two days, and then I’d be able to continue back to LA. 30,000 miles and some money. It wasn’t perfect, but it’d work. The alternatives were to pay a ridiculous fuel surcharge to fly British Airways (more than half the cost of just buying a ticket) or to pay a ridiculous award price and an even more ridiculous fuel surcharge to fly KLM and Delta using my Delta points. I had US Airways Dividend Miles, but these didn’t help because they only worked for roundtrip itineraries. So, I gritted my teeth and booked it. I guessed I’d figure out a solution. I always do.

By chance, I reconnected with an old friend who lives in Miami. He offered to let me stay in his condo, which would soften the blow of the bad itinerary somewhat. A month or so later, he contacted me. “You know, I forgot that you’re coming during Memorial Day weekend,” he said. “You really don’t want to be in Miami Beach then. It’s an absolute zoo. Everyone who lives here gets out of town because it’s absolutely overrun with insane tourists.” Ugh. That definitely wouldn’t do, but I also wouldn’t be able to cancel my Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan award ticket without paying a ridiculous award redeposit fee. Unless……..

Late last year, Delta ran a challenge for Seattle-based SkyMiles members to go for gold status. Nominally, I live in Seattle–I still have a house there, my mail is sent there, and I’m there enough to maintain legal residence. The promotion involved taking two Delta flights at full fare (anywhere in the Delta system), whereupon Delta awarded 25,000 bonus miles and Gold status for a year. I had two short-haul flights from Los Angeles that I needed to take anyway, and it only cost about an extra $150 to book in the fare classes that Delta required. Status didn’t really matter to me, but the 25,000 bonus miles made it an easy calculation. Even though Delta SkyMiles is an awful program, 25,000 bonus miles are worth at least $250. So, $100 free, just for filling out a form online? Sure! I booked on Delta, and was awarded Gold status. Little did I know that this would save me a bundle of dough later.

Now, Alaska Airlines is running a status challenge for Delta SkyMiles members. You can see where this is going. Just ask Alaska to match your Delta status, and they’ll do it. I sent in the request, and was granted MVP Gold within 2 days. And guess what? MVP Gold waives award redeposit fees! So, I went about searching for alternative flights across the Atlantic. In the interim, my US Airways Dividend Miles account had been consolidated with my American Airlines Aadvantage account, giving me access to one-way awards. What’s more, my US Airways Dividend Miles card–which I scored a few weeks before the program ended–netted me a 10% discount on award redemption. Still no availability from Zagreb, but an airBerlin flight was available from Milan on the 25th with an easy connection back to Los Angeles. No fuel surcharge! I wouldn’t get any work done in the US over a holiday weekend anyway, so why not spend it in Italy? I quickly booked the flight, for a total of 27,000 Aadvantage miles. Honestly, I have had nothing but uncomfortable flights and bad luck with American Airlines on transatlantic legs. I know most other bloggers love them, but they haven’t been good to me and I was happy to avoid them this time.

A quick call to Alaska Airlines later, and as a newly minted MVP Gold, my horrible itinerary through Miami with a holiday weekend stopover was cancelled and the miles were back in my account. There is one thing that can be said for status with frequent flier programs: it gives you more flexibility when booking awards, and you can get a lot of expensive fees waived. It’s rare that I will incur enough such fees in a year to make status even remotely worth chasing, but this year, I have avoided hundreds of dollars in checked baggage fees and award redeposit fees through maintaining status with airlines.

So, now I had a (more or less) free ticket to Turkey and a (more or less) free ticket back from Milan. But I needed to close the gap. And I don’t know if you’ve ever booked flight tickets to and from Zagreb, but just try to find a cheap one. Go ahead. I’ll still be here when you get back. Couldn’t find any, could you? So, that’s where Air Serbia came in.

A free ticket to Istanbul…

..and a free ticket back from Milan. But I was actually going to Zagreb.

air serbia logo You might be thinking “Wait, what? Air Serbia? You mean, the flag carrier of Slobodan Milosevic’s former regime? The flag carrier of the country that had a civil war with Croatia, and the country that still refuses to acknowledge Kosovo?” Yes, that Air Serbia. As of late, they have repaired relations with their western neighbor, sort of, to the point that there is commercial air service between the countries. By that, I mean one flight a day. And as it turns out, Air Serbia is part owned by Etihad Airways, so it might even be sort of safe. Most importantly, Air Serbia has a very interesting idea of what constitutes a “roundtrip.” They allow an open jaw under some circumstances. All I needed to do was use a hidden cities itinerary.

Oh yeah, hidden cities itineraries. You know, the thing that I warn people never to do because they can horribly backfire. Well, in this case, if I somehow ended up in Istanbul instead of Frankfurt (my connecting city) it would cost me 90 euro to fix the problem. Air Serbia is remarkably flexible when it comes to changes and cancellations, even on non-refundable fares. So I went ahead and booked the flight. FRA-BEG. 23 hours on the ground. BEG-ZAG. Then ZAG-BEG, 4 hours on the ground, BEG-MXP. Less than half the price of pretty much every airline. Why? This was considered a roundtrip.

Does this look like a roundtrip to you?

Why was it cheaper? This is considered a round-trip flight, rather than a series of one-way flights. Where flights to Zagreb are concerned, this ends up being cheaper. A lot cheaper. And when viewed from a certain angle, it is a round-trip flight. Frankfurt to Zagreb, with a layover (not a stopover, because it’s only 23 hours) in Belgrade, then turning around and returning to… Milan.

Wait, what? How is a city in Italy considered the return portion of a roundtrip ticket from Germany? Because this is an open jaw itinerary. Normally, fare rules don’t permit open jaws. However, Air Serbia has extremely liberal routing rules. All the crazy things that you can normally only do with frequent flier tickets are possible with their paid fares. Which is how, for less than $200, I was able to visit two additional European cities I haven’t previously visited (Belgrade and Milan), and enjoy a round-trip flight to Europe for free.

This all assumes that everything works out as planned, and I don’t end up in Turkey unexpectedly. If that happens, it’s going to suck. I don’t have any miles that will get me out of Turkey cheaply or easily. Fortunately, Air Serbia flies to Istanbul, and they will–for a fee–allow me to apply my ticket toward another one departing from Istanbul. So, I’d lose about $200 in the worst case scenario–still less than a British Airways fuel surcharge.

So, there you go. This is how to use the Open Jaw Jam. Keep in mind that while it’s generally difficult to do this with paid fares, you can often use open jaws on award tickets. This is where things get really interesting, particularly on intra-Asia award tickets. If you play your cards right, you can potentially visit multiple cities with vast distances between them, all on a single low-cost award.

Mistake Fare Versus Sale Fare: Can You Tell The Difference?

February 12, 2015February 12, 2015 TProphet0 comment

In the past year, I have taken three trips at exceptionally low fares. Can you guess which one was the mistake fare?

Phoenix to Quito return, with an overnight stopover in Mexico City, for $398, in February.
A lovely fall trip from Los Angeles to Copenhagen return for $545.
Los Angeles to Beijing one-way via Europe (an inconvenient routing, requiring multiple stopovers and the airlines I used can’t get you there otherwise) for $450.

If you’re scratching your head trying to figure it out, I don’t blame you. All of these were good fares, but they might have been either a good sale fare or a mistake fare. Only the last fare I listed, from Los Angeles to Beijing, is widely believed to have been a mistake fare. The airline didn’t include any fuel surcharges on the ticket. But it’d be an entirely normal price–or even a bit higher–for a direct flight between Los Angeles and Beijing. The low fare to Quito? An Aeromexico promotional fare to celebrate their newly launched service. And the Los Angeles to Copenhagen fare? A response by Air France to Norwegian Air Shuttle’s promotional fares, the latter having newly entered the market.

In Europe, Ryanair routinely sells flights for as little as one euro. There are $99 one-way flights from Baltimore to Iceland on sale as we speak. I recently flew on a $59 promotional fare from Los Angeles to Seattle, a route where flights often cost 3 times as much. So, if an airline sells tickets at a really low price, there is plenty of precedent: it’s usually a really good sale fare. This is particularly true on airlines such as Ryanair, who make most of their money on ancillary fees such as luggage charges and advanced seat selection. The fare is cheap because it only includes a seat. Nothing else. Seat assignments and luggage are extra. There is even a fee to buy the ticket!

Yesterday, United Airlines was selling business class seats between London and Newark for about $75 roundtrip. Was this a competitive response to the far superior Club World London City service offered by British Airways? A promotional stunt? Or a mistake? United claims it was a mistake and they aren’t honoring the tickets. They have consistently argued with the US Department of Transportation that they shouldn’t have to honor fares they didn’t mean to sell, even after taking your money and issuing you a ticket. Up until now, the Department of Transportation hasn’t agreed.

In pleadings before the Department of Transportation, airlines have argued that travel bloggers are Evil Incarnate, spreading news of mistake fares far and wide and costing them millions of dollars. When there is a mistake fare, they argue, airlines’ financial losses are greater these days because news of good deals just spreads faster. Well, this is definitely true. However, usually it’s not news of mistake fares. Instead, it’s free publicity for the airlines and I don’t think that they should get to pick and choose which kinds of deals bloggers can communicate, and which ones they have to honor. After all, I have personally helped to hand the airlines a megaphone when there are good sale fares they want advertised. For example, I drove tens of thousands of dollars in business to Alaska Airlines with this blog post.

There is also a fairness issue. After all, if you want to get out of something in the airline’s Contract of Carriage, the airline doesn’t offer you any flexibility. So, why should they get to weasel out of the contract when it would benefit them? Nobody has filed a complaint with the Department of Transportation yet about United’s refusal to honor yesterday’s mistake fares, but it’ll be interesting to see whether they allow United to get out of the contract. I hope the government doesn’t hand airlines a license to gin up all the free publicity they want while not actually having to deliver the goods.

HOT: Save At Least 20% On All Flights Right Now

December 16, 2014December 17, 2014 TProphet5 Comments

As you have probably heard, the Russian ruble has effectively collapsed. This has created a tremendous arbitrage opportunity, but only if you take immediate action to leverage it.

The ruble effectively collapsed today

Airline tickets are quoted and priced in GDS systems, and currency conversions aren’t adjusted real-time. With the rapid collapse of the ruble, this means that you can effectively get a discount of 20% or more by paying in rubles versus dollars.

So, let’s look at a nice peak season flight from Los Angeles to Costa Rica on anywayanyday, a Russian travel agency:

A typical peak season flight price to Costa Rica

As you can see, it’s $792 in US dollars. This is a typical non-sale fare price to Costa Rica during the peak season. Wouldn’t it be nice to turn this into a good peak season sale fare instead?

If you change your currency selection on this menu from USD to RUB, you can pay in the Ruble currency. Note that it’s a good idea to call your bank before you do this, because there is a slight possibility that they might consider it unusual that you are paying for things in rubles on a Russian travel site. By this, I meant that they will panic and block your card, which will cause you an endless amount of hassle. Why use a Russian travel site in the first place? It’ll be very hard for anyone involved to argue later that you shouldn’t be able to pay for things in Russia using rubles.

Now, let’s see what happens after you change the currency:

Yikes, that’s a big number!

The price becomes 41,638 rubles. So, let’s see how much that is worth in dollar terms:

Well, that’s interesting, isn’t it? It’s $196 cheaper to pay in rubles.

Folks, this sort of arbitrage opportunity almost never happens and it will not last. Take advantage while you can!

UPDATE: Many airlines are starting to correct this by repricing their tickets in the GDS systems. With British Airways, it is actually less expensive to book in dollars or euros now. Double-check the conversion before you book!

Emirates (Sort Of) Honors Low India Fares

October 16, 2014October 16, 2014 TProphet0 comment

On Tuesday night, there was an incredible deal to India on Emirates. How incredible? $450 roundtrip from Los Angeles to Mumbai. There were even better deals, including $258 roundtrip from Los Angeles to Hyderabad. Deals were available from most North American cities served by Emirates. However, they could only be booked on Vayama, who has a fairly unusual procedure for issuing tickets.This ultimately torpedoed my trip, along with everyone else who booked these low fares.

Last night, I received email from Vayama backing out of the deal:

Dear Customer,

We recently received your online booking request. Quality control has determined that your booking could not be processed at the fare that was originally quoted. Unfortunately, the airline was unable to accept the fare that was quoted earlier and as a result, the fare is increased now. This was an issue from Emirates Airline due to fuel surcharge was not updated on the ticket price. Hence we would suggest you to either cancel this reservation or accept the below fare. We are doing this to avoid any kind of problem at the airport.

The total fare now is $992.74 USD

please respond to the email or call us on 1.877.628.6452 at the earliest convenience if you agree to pay the new fare, so that we will go ahead and issue your ticket. If you have any questions please feel free to respond to this email and we will get back to you generally within 24 hours.

***Please note: fares are not guaranteed until the final processing is complete***

We apologize for any inconvenience this has caused.

Sincerely,

Customer Care Team

What was the root cause here? You have to have both a reservation and a ticket number in order for the contract to be complete. Vayama, for whatever reason, makes a reservation immediately upon booking, but manually processes ticketing. They likely do this to avoid fraudulent credit card charges. If an airline decides that a low fare was a mistake, it’s very easy for them to back out of the deal in this scenario. No ticket was actually issued at the time of purchase, hence there was no Contract of Carriage. So, Emirates didn’t legally have to honor the deal–and they didn’t. I will have to visit India another time.

UPDATE: I just received a phone call from Vayama indicating that Emirates will honor the fare after all. However, the ticket that was issued was a very heavily restricted ticket which is the same category issued for frequent flier tickets. This means that it likely will not earn mileage with Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan. However, at a 50% discount from the usual lowest fare, it’s still a very good deal to visit India.

Is It Safe To Book A Mistake Fare?

June 3, 2014June 5, 2014 TProphet0 comment

Every time there is a widely publicized and unusually good mistake fare, I end up answering the same question: “Sure, you got a great deal, but will the airline honor it?” A follow-on question is often something like “When I get to the airport, will I be able to check in for my flight?” The answer is usually yes, but there are some cases where the answer is no. Here are 5 simple rules to help you avoid getting tripped up along the way.

Rule #1: An itinerary and a confirmation number is not a ticket. You booked your ticket. The online travel agency sent you an itinerary that indicates the price and the amount charged to your credit card. You even got a confirmation number (one of those codes that looks like CNF1NQ). And then you show up at the airport to check in, the agent types in her computer, frowns, and says the dreaded words:

Sir, your reservation is not ticketed on this itinerary. You will need to purchase a ticket to travel today.

So what happened? Occasionally there can be a glitch in booking where you make a reservation but a ticket is never actually issued. You need both a reservation and a ticket number to travel, and without both, you’re not going anywhere. Do you have any recourse? Only if you were charged for the flight. 99% of the time, when you go back to review your credit card statement, you were never actually charged and will be stuck either buying a very expensive last-minute ticket or abandoning your itinerary.

Rule #2: Don’t Call The Airline. While a deal is active is not the time to contact the airline. If they find out that you got a good deal, they will use every trick in the book to void your contract and cancel the tickets. Only after a ticket number is issued and confirmed, and enough time has passed to thwart shenanigans (72 hours to be safe), should you contact the airline.

Rule #3: $0 fares can be voided. If the airline mistakenly gave you a completely free ticket (charging only government imposed taxes), there is some legal precedent that they can get out of the contract by refunding everything you were charged. This is because the airline never actually took your money in exchange for providing a service (they only collected taxes on behalf of the government), so they never actually entered a contract with you. This theory hasn’t been tested lately because airlines decided that the revenue lost from a few seats mistakenly given away wasn’t worth going to court. However, do keep in mind that they could probably go to court and win. One attorney suggested that if there is any airline-imposed charge in the booking (such as a fuel surcharge or even 1 cent in fare), the airline would have a much more difficult legal case to make. Of course, I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice.

Rule #4: Frequent flier tickets are a whole different ball game. An airline makes a mistake and offers a routing to Aruba via Amsterdam with a free stopover in Europe, but charges you only the mileage for a single-leg journey to the Caribbean. You can’t believe your luck, and the airline can’t either. A few days before you are due to travel, after having already prepaid for hotels in Amsterdam, you are contacted by the airline. They deliver an ultimatum: either cancel the whole journey (losing all of the money you have already prepaid) or alternatively, they’ll essentially wipe out your whole frequent flier account by re-pricing the trip as three one-way trips: one from North America to Europe, another from Europe to the Caribbean, and finally from the Caribbean to North America. “You’re lucky we can’t prove that you did this on purpose,” they say, “or we’d close your frequent flier account.” Your biggest question is whether they can really do this, and unfortunately, the answer is yes, they can. Airlines are allowed to do pretty much whatever they want when it comes to administering their frequent flier programs. They have very wide latitude, so tread carefully when a frequent flier redemption seems too good to be true.

Rule #5: Contracts Rule. By taking your money and issuing a ticket number, an airline has entered a contract with you. This isn’t true with frequent flier or other $0 fare tickets, but if the fare is 1 cent or more, the contract is in place. You can’t get out of a contract with an airline just because you wish you hadn’t entered it, and the same goes for the airline. So, don’t be afraid to assert your rights if an airline contacts you and tries to get out of the contract. Airlines know this, and also would generally prefer not to alert the general public to mistake fares. So, they usually just try to sweep mistake fares under the rug and allow anyone who has already purchased tickets to fly with no trouble.

Mistake fares can offer some incredible values in travel, and take you to some places that you might not consider visiting otherwise. I enjoyed an incredible visit to Ecuador on Aeromexico, which moved to the top of my list when roundtrip fares (widely believed to be mistake fares) dropped below $400. I was even able to upgrade one segment to first class for $40, I squeezed in a side trip to Mexico City, and I received Delta SkyMiles for the entire itinerary! As long as you follow the 5 simple rules above, you should have no problem flying on mistake fares you find!

How I Booked A Round-The-World Trip For Under $219

May 26, 2014June 5, 2014 TProphet1 Comment

Occasionally, airlines will make a mistake when publishing fares. This happens once or twice a year and usually lasts only a relatively short time. This time, two mistake fares happened in rapid succession, one with Alitalia and another with American Airlines, and both the same sort of fare mistake. The Alitalia mistake fare represented a considerably better value and I booked it. I am traveling all the way around the world for just $450.30 in cash and I will earn miles while doing it. This is like paying under $219! Note: These fares are no longer available.

I first became aware of the mistake fare when I saw a tweet from @TheFlightDeal alerting me to it. If you’re not using Twitter to find good deals on flights, you’re really missing out! The people behind this particular account are really, really good. They research and publish exceptionally low fares to a number of destinations. In this case, they didn’t find the deal; someone who posted on FlyerTalk in the Mileage Run Deals forum did. However, they published it quickly after it was posted. Note that for mistake fares, minutes matter. You need to move very fast or you usually will not be able to get them at all.

In this case, the mistake fare was of a type called a “fuel dump.” If you booked a ticket with an Alitalia segment using a particular fare construction on Priceline, the fuel surcharges were not included on the ticket–just the actual fare and taxes. And this presented an incredible opportunity. For a variety of reasons (most of them involving tax dodges and none of them particularly scrupulous), airlines publish very low fares, and most of the cost of a ticket is billed as a “fuel surcharge.” If you can find a way to book a ticket without paying the surcharge, you’ll often end up getting a really inexpensive fare. Generally speaking, airlines have to honor mistake fares if they originate or terminate in the United States. Taking your money and issuing a ticket constitutes a contract in the US, and airlines can’t get out of a contract just because they wish they hadn’t entered it. After all, if you want to get out of the contract, airlines don’t offer any flexibility either.

To get this particular mistake fare, you had to start in Los Angeles or New York, fly at least half of the itinerary on Alitalia-marketed segments (note this doesn’t mean you had to fly Alitalia, just on flights using their flight number), travel into either Milan, Prague, or Budapest, break your journey with a stopover and/or an open jaw, and finally end up in an Asian city. And obviously, this was a one-way fare only. “Fuel dumps” tend to be complicated things like this, where at some point the creaky legacy systems that price and sell tickets break down and something important (like a fuel surcharge) breaks out of the “fare construction,” as it is called in industry parlance.

The upshot? I’m flying from Los Angeles to Boston on Delta, changing to Alitalia flights onward to Rome and Budapest, staying a week, and then continuing on from Budapest to Beijing on KLM and China Southern via Amsterdam (with a 22-hour layover in Amsterdam, enough time to visit friends). The total fare was $362.90. This is actually not the cheapest fare that was offered; some people were able to arrange one-way journeys to Asia (typically from New York to Milan and then onward to Tokyo) for as little as $127. Most of the exceptionally low fares like these involved a lot of searching, with the risk that the deal would die at any moment. I worked very quickly, grabbing tickets for dates that I knew would be personally good for me and booking immediately before the deal disappeared, which turned out not to be a major concern. This particular deal stayed alive for over 24 hours. All of the tickets issued are being honored, no matter how low the fare, and they even qualify for frequent flier credit.

Incidentally, American Airlines made the exact same mistake with fuel surcharges–to the same part of the world–the very next day. Fares to eastern Europe clocked in as low as $500 roundtrip, depending on your originating city. The fuel surcharge was dropped when at least one segment of the journey had an American Airlines flight number when traveling on a US Airways flight. This problem was fixed within a few hours, but not before hundreds of cut-rate tickets were sold.

“So,” you may ask, “That’s great, and congratulations, but you’re ending up in Beijing. Unless you’re moving there, what is your plan to get home?” This is where miles and points can come in very handy, as long as your frequent flier program allows ticketing one-way awards. I currently have miles and points with the Alaska, American and Avianca programs which allow one-way ticketing. However, I am just short of the number of American Aadvantage points required for an economy ticket from Beijing to Los Angeles, and I am also short in my Avianca LifeMiles account because US Bank hasn’t credited my account with the promised 20,000 bonus miles for their credit card signup. While Avianca would let me buy up to the number of miles required, it wasn’t a very attractive option, so I decided to use my Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan miles.

The best one-way option to the US from China on Alaska Airlines is by flying Cathay Pacific. It costs only 30,000 miles for an economy-class seat from Asia to the US. However, I just flew in Cathay Pacific economy class last week from Hong Kong to Los Angeles, and it wasn’t particularly comfortable. Part of this was due to the very obese woman next to me who insisted on putting her dirty feet on the bulkhead the whole way while spilling into my seat, but part of this was the 10-across seating, indifferent service, and poor food quality. However, for 35,000 miles, Alaska Airlines offers an award in Cathay Pacific premium economy–if you can find the space. This isn’t easy to find, and Alaska Airlines doesn’t publish Cathay Pacific space online. You have to call, and it’s really “hit or miss” (mostly miss) with the agents when you call them. They are all friendly and will typically go out of their way to help you if you know exactly which flights you want, but they aren’t always particularly good at searching for award space.

If you join the British Airways Avios plan, you can search for availability on Cathay Pacific. I am a member (with zero miles in my account), so I began my search. Predictably, there was no availability on Cathay Pacific when searching PEK-LAX:

Typically, this is the type of search that an agent will perform when they look for space availability. They will feed the computer your starting and ending airports and if no award pops out, they will tell you that there isn’t any availability. However, what happens if we search a different way? Let’s first look for availability between Hong Kong and Los Angeles:

Now there’s suddenly availability, and there is even a seat in premium economy! We now know we can get from Hong Kong to Los Angeles. All we need to do is get from Beijing to Hong Kong in order to complete the flight. Unfortunately, this isn’t particularly easy on a Cathay Pacific award, because most flights between Beijing and Hong Kong are operated by Cathay’s Dragonair subsidiary. There are only two Cathay Pacific flights per day, and you can only use those with an Alaska Airlines award. Also, the earliest Cathay Pacific flight on Sunday morning arrives after the morning flight from Hong Kong to Los Angeles leaves.

Hmm. If you spend less than 24 hours in Hong Kong, it’s a layover, and not a stopover. This is a very important distinction. Could I go from Beijing to Hong Kong on Saturday and enjoy a visit to Hong Kong as well?Why yes, I could! I called Alaska and booked it. As I expected, the Boise-based agent was very friendly but had never booked such a complicated itinerary before and had no idea what the rules were. I opted to book in premium economy, which is a rare excellent value. If you paid for this fare, it is priced at about $1,000 more than an economy class ticket, but costs only 5,000 extra miles. For a nearly 17-hour flight, the upgrade is actually worthwhile (I almost never consider an upgrade worthwhile, but in this case, I believe it was). The best part? Alaska Airlines allows a stopover anywhere in North America that they serve, as long as your continuing flight is only on Alaska Airlines flights, and it’s available at the “saver” award level. Since I knew I needed to go home to Seattle for Christmas, I added on a flight from Los Angeles to Seattle on Christmas Eve. Alaska had plenty of “saver” economy level availability for this flight. So, my award is technically from Beijing to Seattle with a stopover in Los Angeles, and cost me only 35,000 miles and $102.90 in taxes and booking fees.

I will receive 12,828 Delta SkyMiles for this journey, which is halfway to a free domestic roundtrip ticket. I value SkyMiles at 1 cent per mile, making the effective cost of the ticket $128.28 less. As a special bonus, I also received a free one-way ticket home for Christmas which would otherwise have cost me $119. This more than offsets the redemption cost of my Alaska Airlines miles!

Overall, this is like paying only $218.52 and 35,000 Alaska Airlines miles for a round-the-world journey of 22,276 miles, with the chance to visit five different cities. This will be my first time flying Alitalia, my first time flying in premium economy, and my second round-the-world journey this year. I can hardly wait!