Bryce’s Travel Tip of the Day

Sorry the blog has been so sparse lately. I’ve been really (really) busy, and I just had to set it to the side. That said, I wanted to pop on today to give you a quick travel hack I just used.

As you know, I’m going to Scotland for WorldCon in August. I bought one way tickets there, since I wanted to fly with Denisa and the girls, and they were flying one way to Scotland, then to Vienna, and then to Boston. The plan was always for me to fly home from Scotland. The one way ticket prices were great at the time ($350), so we bought those months ago.

Since then, I’ve been checking the return ticket prices every day, and every day, they’ve been $950+ for a halfway decent ticket back. They weren’t budging, and I started to get sick of checking again and again. Was I really just going to have to bite the bullet and buy one at that price?

Then I got the idea to check round trip prices. It turns out, I could get a one way ticket on Ryanair to Dublin for $60, and then a round trip ticket from there, five hours later, to Boston for $450. That’s a pretty killer difference, though it would involve two different reservations and a very early (4am) arrival to the airport, plus that long layover.

So I decided to check roundtrip tickets from Edinburgh, and I found a direct flight on Delta for $811. Was it as cheap? No. But direct! That makes a huge difference. I checked the price for a one way direct ticket on Delta. $1,800. So . . . I bought the round trip ticket. This isn’t like I’m going to get off at a layover and not board my next flight (that’s really discouraged). I’m just going to use the ticket there and then . . . miss my flight home. I’ll save $1,000 off the one way ticket, and my trip home just got that much easier.

Not sure if you’ll ever need that tidbit of information, but knowing is half the battle . . .

3 thoughts on “Bryce’s Travel Tip of the Day”

  1. Some years ago we saved $$ by flying in and out of Montreal. When paid in USD, it discounts by about 1/3 price because of US-CAN exchange rate. Also, out of Canada it’s generally cheaper anyway. But, then you have to get from Montreal to Maine… Just a thought.

    1. Yup–I’ve done that three times. Once to Europe, once to Florida, and once to Hawaii. It’s an especially good deal if you do it at Thanksgiving, which isn’t at the same time in Canada, so you’re not paying vacation prices.

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