A few tips from our recent emergency trip
We had a family emergency last week and had to find a flight to Seattle from New York City in a big hurry. We all know that as the flights fill up, the prices go up. But I'd forgotten that if you're buying TWO (or more) seats, they're both billed at the price of the most expensive seat . ( FYI the flights were so full because the airlines had already issued a weather-related travel waiver for Saturday - meaning that lots of people were trying to leave a day early ) TIP 1: Sometimes it's cheaper to book two separate tickets! In my specific example: if I searched for two seats, they were $1800 each. But when I changed the search to just one seat (on the very same flight), the price dropped to $718. Once we purchased that seat, the other seat (the last one one the plane) jumped up to $1800. Now at $1800 all kinds of terrible domestic point rewards start to make financial sense. What I ended up with was a 3¢ per point redemption (60,000 points) – not great but ...