MINUTE DISCOUNTS?
Many people have heard that they can get a cheaper ticket if they wait until the last minute, when “airlines sell off blocks of unsold seats cheaply to consolidators, who sell them for whatever they can get”. This is not true. Airlines and agencies don’t really work that way. It is sometimes possible to get a cheap ticket on very short notice, but you rarely get a cheaper ticket than if you had planned ahead, and it may be impossible to get a reasonable price, or even to find any available space at all, at the last minute. Getting the best price on most around-the-world itineraries requires having tickets issued in several different places, often on several different continents; it takes a minimum of a couple of weeks for your agent to import these tickets for you from overseas. (This is why, if you must leave right away, you may have to pick up some of your tickets from your agent’s overseas affiliates as you travel, an arrangement few people prefer and which can usually be avoided by
Many people have heard that they can get a cheaper ticket if they wait until the last minute, when “airlines sell off blocks of unsold seats cheaply to consolidators, who sell them for whatever they can get”. This is not true. Airlines and agencies don’t really work that way. It is sometimes possible to get a cheap ticket on very short notice, but you rarely get a cheaper ticket than if you had planned ahead, and it may be impossible to get a reasonable price, or even to find any available space at all, at the last minute. Getting the best price on most around-the-world itineraries requires having tickets issued in several different places, often on several different continents; it takes a minimum of a couple of weeks for your agent to import these tickets for you from overseas. (This is why, if you must leave right away, you may have to pick up some of your tickets from your agent’s overseas affiliates as you travel, an arrangement few people prefer and which can usually be avoided by
