The 18 Tactical Things I’ve Learnt From Travelling on Crazy Adventures
Over the past few years, I’ve flown quite a bit. Whether that’s through my crazy backpacking adventures, volunteering abroad or through my work at Major League Hacking. Along the way, I’ve discovered a ton about the commercial airline industry — that developer evangelists, nomads or just avid travellers — should know as it’ll make travelling way more enjoyable.
To make it digestible, I‘ve created the following sections:
- 1. Finding Your Flight
- 2. Booking Your Flight
- 3. Getting To The Airport
- 4. During Your Flight
- 5. After Your Flight
Please Note: This guide is comprehensive and is by no means factual; it is simply things that I have experienced (and work for me) and conclusions that I’ve made. If you find anything to be factually incorrect, please let me know.
1. Finding Your Flight
1.1 Look for particular airports to fly out from.
At almost any given point, there’s a set bunch of airports which are phenomenally cheap to fly from. Often this plays a part in the country’s government wanting to increase tourism and thus subsides the cost of flight travel through reduced fuel costs. All you need to care about is which airports these are. In my experience, Oslo (OSL) has been an obvious one.
1.2 Consider buying tickets in a different currency
This one seems new to most people. A large reason as to probably why is because you think they just convert the ticket price to a different currency. This is not entirely true. I’ve once booked a return flight to Hong Kong for £220 simply by buying it in Hong Kong Dollars (in GBP it would have been £400+). My hypothesis is that airlines may want to appeal to customers in certain countries and this seems like a perfectly viable way of doing that.
1.3 Consider flying an “open-jaw” flight.
I’ll admit when I first saw “open-jaw” flights, I thought it meant the fare was so low it would make you open your jaw in amazement. I was wrong. An “open-jaw” flight is where your first departure airport is different from your last arrival airport. An example would be London-Barcelona-Amsterdam. These are often dramatically cheaper because particular routes become expensive (for example, London to Barcelona could be cheap but Barcelona to London could be very expensive. Don’t ask why.) and you can avoid them using open-jaw. You can book open-jaw flights by selecting the “Multi-Flight” option. Another way of booking “open-jaw” flights is to book two one-way flights, either with the same or different airlines.
1.4 Budget airlines can actually be enjoyable.
Budget airlines such as Ryanair, Easyjet, WizzAir, JetBlue or Norwegian are often known as being really unpleasant experiences. I know first hand because I’m tall (6'4 inches) and they have as little legroom as they can get away with. Whenever I book with low-cost airlines, if you a) pay extra for seat selection and booking exit row seats or front row seats and b) pay for priority boarding then it’s more than enjoyable and still is quite cheap. Maybe this one is just applicable to tall people.
Also, there are quite a number of routes which major airlines don’t operate which budget airlines do (particularly for upcoming cities) along with the vastly cheaper cost that often steers you towards going with a budget airline.
1.5 Look at the plane you’re flying on and how much legroom you get.
This one is overlooked by most people, largely because they don’t know what an Airbus A380 means versus a Boeing 777–800. Truth is, this can make a big difference. The type of airplane you fly can determine how much noise the aircraft has, how much turbulence you’re likely to get, services that you’re going to expect (i.e. entertainment systems and plug sockets) along with other things. Also use Google Flights to handily check how much legroom you get as when each airline orders a plane they can specify how much legroom each seat gets — so it’s different on every plane.
In my experience, the best passenger airplanes right now are: Boeing 787 Dreamliner, Boeing 747–8, Airbus A380 and Airbus A350 XWB. And in a couple of years, look out for the Boeing 777x.
There’s one exception here: if you’re flying with a budget airline, ignore this section because usually all of their fleet consists of the same plane (usually a Boeing 737–800) so they can save $ on maintenance staff. Not surprising really.
P.S. If you really want to geek out on airplanes, check out AxleGeeks’ tool.
1.6 Sometimes, it’s cheaper to book with an agency.
Booking directly with the airline can actually be more expensive. A big reason why is because when you’re on their website, you only see prices for their flights. The competition is not high and so they can charge more.
It’s different with travel agencies. There is more competition. The bigger agencies negotiate lower prices all the time to give you the best deals. The consequence is that you’re putting money in the pocket of, um, middlemen and not with the airline. But if the fare’s cheaper this way then the fare’s cheaper. It’s the world we live in unfortunately.
Also, it’s worth noting there are two types of travel agencies: the ones who deal with the airlines directly and the resellers. The latter are often the ones where they rip you off and treat you awfully. An example of an agency that deals with the airlines directly and is well known is STA Travel. I’d recommend them.
2. Booking Your Flight
2.1 Look at the fine print.
To be fair, you should be doing this with everything. The fine print is how easily the other party can screw you over, which I’m sure you care about. This one is particularly important with people who redeem vouchers, collect miles through a loyalty program, are buying package deals or are likely to change their flights throughout their stay (hint: don’t buy a flexible ticket, there’s cheaper ways to do it). There’s not much else I can say besides how important it is to do this and if you’re unsure, feel free to reach out.
2.2 Buy a payment card with zero international fees.
When booking your flights, unless you’re staying within the country, you’ll be dealing with other currencies. This is the easiest way that your bank can charge you fees that they shouldn’t be. Essentially they screw you over in two ways, one through a foreign exchange fee and another through modifying the exchange rates to favour them. Both are entirely bullshit.
The two best ways I’ve found to deal with these are a) get a Mondo card if you’re in the UK or b) buy a pre-paid card with zero international fees. Both are excellent options and pretty much cover you for this.
2.3 The “5-day” rule.
If I’m ever abroad for more than 5 days, I buy a local SIM card. This is pretty much a rule now. When I would backpack in the States, I bought a local SIM card and bought fixed monthly packages which costed me £30 for 6 GB’s of data per month. Had I not bought a SIM card, I’d be paying £100’s of pounds in unnecessary costs.
Tip: If you’re in Europe or North America a lot, you should consider using a Three SIM card as their international fees are very reasonable. If you’re on a package with them, your data is free abroad which is an really good deal.
2.4 Sign up for an airport loyalty program.
If you’re going to be taking more than 3 flights per year, you should absolutely register for an airport loyalty program. Even if you don’t get any airline status from it, you receive points from your flights that don’t expire and you’re essentially collecting free money. The incentive for airlines to do this is that you’re more likely to book with them or their partners as a result.
There’s three main alliances you can join: oneworld (i.e. British, American, Cathay Pacific, Qatar Airways, etc), Star Alliance (United, Lufthansa, etc) or SkyTeam (Delta, KLM, Singapore, etc). They all have different advantages and if you’re deliberating about joining one, look up which one suits you best. I’m with oneworld largely because I love flying with BA, but that’s me.
Suggestion: If you’re on oneworld and looking to progress through tiers quickly, shoot me an email and I’ll be more to happy to explain for free the most value for money way of getting the status you want.
Tip: As weird as it might seem, it’s not unheard of to have an account with multiple or all the alliances. There’s things you can collect that never expire and it means you’re always loyal to the cheapest airline whilst still reaping rewards.
2.5 You can almost always get flight change fees waived.
There’s been a few times where I’ve had to change my flight when I have bought the cheapest ticket I could in economy class. Initially I would just go and pay the fee. But over time, I’ve learnt that customer service managers can waive fees very easily and almost all the time without having to justify it to anyone higher up. They consider Flight Change Fees as an extra source of income for the airlines (and not the main one) so often it’s money gained rather than money lost. This means there’s a lot more room to negotiate.
Hint: Always speak to the manager. It’s almost impossible to change your flight for free without doing so. And from my experience, there isn’t a way around paying a fare difference if the new flight ticket is higher than what you paid.
Ideally I’d recommend avoiding this situation as much as possible. This strategy does work most of the time, but it’s easily one of my least enjoyable things to do.
3. Getting To The Airport
3.1 When using a taxi to/from airports, avoid metered pricing entirely.
This is absolutely the easiest way to get ripped off. Most taxi drivers will charge astronomical prices and in most countries, they’ll insist not to use the metered pricing (so that those machines report less income = less taxes) and just straight up charge you astronomical costs. Usually 3-5x the price.
If I’m in a country where I know I’m likely to be ripped off, I usually hear out their initial price and just tell them my friends paid 3x less. So an example would be: “This taxi ride is 300 [insert currency here]” and my response would be: “What? My friend’s came here yesterday and paid 100!”. This is usually if I haven’t found out online how much I should be paying for a taxi.
Note to self: why doesn’t everywhere have Uber yet? Hurry up, Uber!
3.2 See the seating options as you’re getting to the airport.
If you’re anything like me, you’ll want to sit in the least busiest part of the plane. Maybe it’s just me in that I’m very tall and I know I’ll make those who sit next to me in economy hate me. My knees get crushed on some airline’s economy class, it’s not great at all.
And by checking as I arrive to the airport, if there’s an aisle or some seats available, I’ll usually change my seat. There’s multiple times where I’ve done this where I’ve ended up with an aisle all by myself, and sometimes on quite busy flights. Clearly something that doesn’t work on budget airlines as you have to pay for your seat, but when you can, often most people don’t change their seats so you’re more likely to have a win here.
4. During Your Flight
4.1 If you see a spare premium economy seat, feel free to go ask for it.
There’s quite a few flights where I’ve flown and there’s a premium economy seat available. And when everyone’s boarded, I go up to the cabin staff and ask them if I can sit in it and they’ll often tell me I can once we’ve taken off.
This is an easy way to have a more enjoyable flight, especially for myself being so tall. But it’s worth noting because you didn’t pay for the premium economy fare, you won’t collect any additional points or upgrades from it.
Alternatively, if it’s a red-eye flight or long haul, I would make sure that if there’s an aisle free and everyone’s boarded that I quickly hop in and use that as a way to sleep through the flight quite comfortably.
Note: Pretty obvious, but if you get a free premium economy seat after take-off and it’s not stated on your ticket, you won’t earn additional miles. Obviously.
4.2 Pack flight socks or stand up every couple hours if you can.
This is one I’ve avoided for a long time until I had knee surgery in September 2015. It’s hugely important that if you don’t wear compression socks during your flight, you should consider walking around every 2 hours at least. Why? This helps you to avoid getting Deep Vein Thrombosis (DVT) more commonly known as a blood clot. A big deal.
This is definitely one that I’m still learning how to do better at. Right now I just instinctively stand up as much as I can, but it can be hard in long-haul or red-eye flights which I’m not sure I can do much about besides the socks.
Hint: It might be a good idea to pack comfortable clothes. Because, you know, trying to sleep in jeans on a plane and all that. I’m trying to get better at this.
4.3 When you take off, change your timezone.
If you’re going to be changing timezones, it’s good to know what time you’re going to be switching your body to. The easiest way to do this is to change your timezone to your destination as soon as you take off. Pretty simple.
5. After Your Flight
5.1 Check your loyalty benefits have been applied.
If you’re collecting miles or points, you should really make sure that they’re applied to your account. You’re pretty likely to forget to put your credentials in when booking flights if you’re new to the world of airline loyalty programs, and often it’s just really good practice. Again, pretty simple.
5.2 If you was delayed, check you’re eligible for compensation.
The beautiful thing about EU Law is that when your flight is delayed by at least 2 hours, you’re eligible for €300. €600 if it’s more than 4 hours. But airlines aren’t obligated to give it out at all if you don’t ask for it — simple.
How do you do this, you may ask? Go email the airline and tell them that you’re exercising your right to Regulation 261/2004 and you’d like to claim credit. They’ll offer you slightly more in airline credit or the respective amount above in cash. It’s up to you what you take.
Note: You must be departing from/arriving to an airport within a country that is a EU Member State, obviously. And it’ll take up to 6 weeks for you to process. There are also a few other exceptions which you can find in this document.
Hint: You might have seen an ad that can help you claim compensation. Yeah, avoid them at all costs. They just email the airline and claim the compensation on your behalf and take a cut which they absolutely don’t deserve.
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As always, if you’ve got any questions, feedback or generally just want to have a chat about developer evangelism, backpacking, travelling or just about anything else — feel free to drop me an email anytime!
