Top 10 Tips for Booking Cheap Flights

Top 10 Tips for Booking Cheap Flights

• October 18, 2013
 
• • 
    

We love to give advice on how to help you save money when you book flights. After all, we are CheapAir.com. We’ve compiled our most popular advice below to help you find your next cheap flight. Let us know if you have questions.

1. Check Fares Early & Often

Do you know that, on average, the fare difference between the best day to buy your airline ticket and the worst is $236! And that doesn’t even include people who purchase within 7 days (who pay even more!). Airlines change fares constantly, often multiple times a week. So when it comes to buying an airline ticket, timing is everything. We recommend that you start checking fares as soon as you know you’ll be flying. Then, check continuously, at least once a week to get a sense of what’s a good deal. And when you find a fare you like, be ready to pull the trigger since the same fare may not be around for very long. We know it sounds crazy (and exasperating) but the airlines use very sophisticated computer systems to adjust fares literally in real-time. Buying an airline ticket really can be like playing the stock market! (Learn more about why airfares fluctuate.)

2. Buy at the Right Time

Knowing when to buy your flights can be the best tip for saving some serious cash on your next trip. We did a study last year and found that for domestic flights 49 days (about 7 weeks in advance) was, on average, the optimal time to buy plane tickets. But that number can vary quite a bit depending on where and when you’re going. The most important takeaway from our study: you’ll likely pay a big premium for booking too late (within 14 days), or for booking too early (more than 5 months in advance). Somewhere between 3 weeks and 4 months in advance is usually the sweet spot for flights within the U.S., although all bets are off if you’re traveling for a holiday or other peak time (see #4 below).

3. Some Days are Cheaper than Others

The day of the week you fly on can make a big difference in your air fare. Tuesdays and Wednesdays are generally the least expensive days for domestic flights and Friday and Sunday are the most expensive. (Monday, Thursday, and Saturday are in the middle). The difference between a Tuesday flight and a Sunday flight is $29 each way on average, or $58 round trip. If you’re traveling for the weekend, consider Saturday to Monday or Tuesday instead of a Thursday or Friday to Sunday trip. And if you’re traveling for a full week, Tuesday to Tuesday or Wednesday to Wednesday is often your best bet. More generally, if you’re willing to be flexible, check a bunch of alternate dates around the same time period because you never know when there might be one combination of dates that has a fare a lot lower than the dates around it.

4. Be Mindful of Seasonality & Holidays

Knowing when to go can matter just as much as when to buy. Because the most important factor that influences the price of a particular flight is how full that flight is, it makes sense that travel during Spring Break, Thanksgiving, or Christmas time would be more expensive than normal. Similarly, some destinations, especially international ones, are very seasonal in nature so research the low and peak seasons for the places you’re interested in visiting. If you’re going to Europe, for example, you can find some amazing deals during the February and March low season, but if you want to go during the summer, you’ll pay up to double the price. If you do need to travel to popular places at popular times, you usually want to book earlier than you otherwise would since discount seats are likely to sell out quickly.

5. Mix and Match Airlines to get the Cheapest Flights

CheapAir.com features a “Mix & Match” category that essentially lets you combine two one way fares that may or may not be on the same airline, to form a round trip. “Mix & Match” options come in handy when either (1) the best possible fare for an itinerary requires travel on one airline going out and another airline coming back; or (2) the airline with the most convenient outbound flight doesn’t have a convenient return flight or vice versa.

6. Sign Up for Airfare Alerts and Track Routes

To help keep an eye on fare trends, sign up for CheapAir FareTracker alerts. You’ll get notified more quickly when a sale starts and get a head start when only a limited number of seats are available. Acting quickly when a fare sale starts can save you a lot of money.

7. Prepare for Extra Bag Fees

Different airlines have different policies on baggage. Most charge for checked bags and some even charge for carry-on. You should factor that into your purchase decision. CheapAir makes that easy: when you see a list of flight options on our site, just hover over any of them with your mouse and you will see, among other things, the amount that airline charges for bags. With some airlines it’s also important that, once you buy your ticket, you pay for your bags ahead of time by going to the airline website because they may charge a premium if you wait until you get to the airport. Read more about airline baggage fees and what you need to know before you fly.

8. Check Alternate Airports

If there is more than one airport near your origin or destination city, check them both. The more options you have in terms of airports and travel dates, the more likely you will find what may be one of the last discount seats to where you are going. CheapAir automatically checks some nearby airports for you (San Francisco and Oakland; Miami and Ft. Lauderdale; New York and Newark; Washington, DC and Baltimore), but if you are willing to use other alternates, you should check those, too, by doing separate searches.

9. Break up Families or Groups into Separate Purchases

This one sounds counter-intuitive – the more people that go, the better the rate should be, right? That’s rarely true with the airlines; “group discounts” are few and far between. Because airlines will typically limit the number of seats per flight they sell at their lowest rate, sometimes you can actually price yourself right out of a good deal simply by having too many passengers. If, for instance, Airline X has two seats remaining on a flight at $100 and a bunch of other seats available for $150, if you do a search for a group of 4, the price that will come back will be $150. But if you search for two seats at a time you can buy two for $100 and only have to pay the extra $50 for the second two. How do you know when to do this? Always search first for your whole group at once to make sure that the flight has enough seats to accommodate everyone. Then try the same search for a smaller group. If the price comes out lower for the smaller group, buy the seats for the smaller group, and then do a subsequent search for the rest of your party. It can be a lot of work but, hey, if it saves money…

10. Buy on a Site that Offers Price Drop Payback

OK, this is a somewhat shameless plug, but we think it’s justified. CheapAir’s unique Price Drop Payback program is as simple as this: if the price for the same itinerary goes down any time before your trip, we’ll pay you back the difference in the form of a travel voucher for up to $100 per ticket! We are proud to be the only U.S. travel site that offers this buyer protection and we hope this program will arm you with buying confidence.

CheapAir Travel Advisors are committed to helping you book your next flight and helping you find that awesome travel deal. Use this list as an airfare booking guide. What’s your favorite tip?

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Theater 5 Ring of Evil 1964

#Psytrance #PsychedelicTrance #MrLemilica2 Pulsar & Liquid Sound - Liquid Pulses Remixes [Full Album] ᴴᴰ

#Psytrance #PsychedelicTrance #MrLemilica2

Pulsar & Liquid Sound - Liquid Pulses Remixes [Full Album] ᴴᴰ

Two Dogs Mezcal Will Take You from Labor Day to Day of the Dead L'Officiel I found out I had a ranch in Oaxaca , so I flew down there to make myself a guest at the ranch. There were a few rooms adjacent to it for rent so I hung ...

Two Dogs Mezcal Will Take You from Labor Day to Day of the Dead L'Officiel I found out I had a ranch in Oaxaca , so I flew down there to make myself a guest at the ranch. There were a few rooms adjacent to it for rent so I hung ...

Lawmakers OK same-sex marriage in Mexico’s Oaxaca state

By The Associated Press

August 28, 2019 9:35 pm 

 

< a min read

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MEXICO CITY (AP) — Lawmakers in the southern Mexico state of Oaxaca have approved changing the civil code to authorize same-sex marriage.

A statement from the state congress says marriage will now be defined as a “civil contract celebrated between two persons, who unite to realize a life in common and provide each other respect, equality and mutual help.”

With Wednesday’s vote, about 20 of Mexico’s 31 states plus Mexico City have codified same-sex marriage into law.

Mexico’s Supreme Court ruled previously that it is unconstitutional to ban same-sex marriage. However, in states where it wasn’t expressly authorized, it has been up to individual couples to sue in court for the right to wed.

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The newspaper El Universal reports there were confrontations between evangelical protesters opposed to the measure and LGBTQ activists in favor.

        Insight by Microsoft: Learn best practices managing human capital in challenging times in this exclusive executive briefing.

Copyright © 2019 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This website is not intended for users located within the European Economic Area.

Dream Mixtape 20 - Earthsong Edition #59 By New Age Stars Chillout, New Age, Pop, Downtempo

Koyotl @Recess Summer Edition ᴴᴰ MrLemilica2

Gabriele Schart‎Firefly Cinema, Cine Luciernaga, Zipolite

Gabriele Schart‎Firefly Cinema, Cine Luciernaga, Zipolite

ZIPOLITE SURF FESTIVAL 2019 From August 24 and 25, 2019

ZIPOLITE SURF FESTIVAL 2019

From August 24 and 25, 2019

DATE

Zipolite, Oaxaca.

PLACE

Relaxing Sound of Ocean Waves (Baby Sleep)

Presentan en el Surf Festival Zipolite 2019 by Panorama | Ago 19, 2019

Presentan en el Surf Festival Zipolite 2019

by Panorama | Ago 19, 2019

Durante dos días surfistas de la Costa disputarán el pre selectivo para los Juegos Nacionales de Surfing y competirán en el abierto de surfboard con bolsa de 30 mil pesos.
Zipolite, lugar mágico que debe adoptar el surf como deporte oficial, señalan organizadores
Por. Patricia Pacheco

Organizadores y participantes señalan a Zipolite como la próxima meca del surf en la Costa de Oaxaca.

ZIPOLITE, POCHUTLA. – Posicionar a Zipolite como una playa prototipo para la práctica del surf a nivel mundial, así como potencializar el desempeño de un semillero de jóvenes talento en el deporte de la tabla, son los principios que dan origen al primer Zipolite Surf Festival 2019.
Organizado por promotores locales en coordinación con autoridades municipales y la Asociación de Surf del Estado de Oaxaca (ASEO), el Zipolite Surf se realizará los días 24 y 25 de agosto y forma parte de las dos sedes –la otra se desarrollará en Puerto Escondido- para el pre selectivo para integrar la selección rumbo a los Juegos Nacionales de Surfing 2019.
Zipolite, nueva meca del surf

Durante dos días unos cien participantes disputarán el pase para la selección estatal y el torneo abierto de tabla.

En conferencia de prensa, organizadores y competidores del torneo local explicaron la importancia de que por primera vez Zipolite sea un polo de atracción surfista en el que desplieguen su talento participantes de la más alta categoría de toda la entidad.

“Queremos que Zipolite sea la segunda meca del surf en la Costa de Oaxaca; contamos con olas público, turismo y competidores de alto nivel y nos gustaría ser sede de competencias nacionales e internacionales”, manifestó Fernando Coronado Ferrer, promotor de surf y director del Festival.

Selectivo de bodyboard y open
El también empresario explico que el día 24 tendrá lugar el pre selectivo de bodyboard (tabla corta) con un torneo en el que se han inscrito a la fecha 35 competidores y cuya cifra podría aumentar hasta 60; mientras tanto, el día 25 se realizará un torneo abierto de tabla al que podrán acudir todos los surfistas de la zona con una bolsa a repartir de 30 mil pesos.

Por su parte Fernando Fernández, directivo de la ASEO, señaló que Zipolite es un lugar idóneo para la práctica del deporte de las olas, por lo que se solicitó el respaldo de autoridades auxiliares y municipales encabezadas por el agente Antonio García y la edil Saymi Pineda Velasco, respectivamente, y éstas fueron receptivas para colaborar en la organización y seguridad del evento.

Afirmó que la competición cuenta con el aval de la Federación Mexicana de Surfing y el respaldo de la Comisión Estatal de Cultura Física y Deporte (Cecude).

Buscan que Zipolite sea sede de juegos nacionales

Zipolite cuanta con un semillero importante de jóvenes surfistas.

“Nos interesa mucho que Zipolite despegue como emblema de la práctica del surf, que sea el deporte oficial y estamos solicitando que los juegos nacionales se realicen en Oaxaca y que sea Zipolite la sede, ya que es un lugar mágico en todos los sentidos”, destacó.

Fernández advirtió que es importante desarrollar el talento con disciplina de los jóvenes surfistas de la zona, pues ya quedó atrás el estigma de que el surf era un deporte de vagos y se trata de un deporte olímpico.

De su lado, Luis Felipe García Arvea, comisionado de Turismo del Ayuntamiento de Pochutla, consideró que el Zipolite Surf Festival puede constituirse como un producto turístico que atraiga a una gran cantidad de visitantes de la zona y el estado de Oaxaca y ello derive en un aliciente de la economía local.

Maximiliano y su sueño

4. Max, de apenas 10 años cumple su sueño y participa en la competición local.

Cada que trepa una ola y logra vencer su extraordinaria inmensidad, Maximiliano consigue hacer realidad su sueño.

Pequeño, serio y aferrado a su tabla, Max, originario de Zipolite, con tan solo 10 años de edad- seis de ellos practicando bodyboard ininterrumpidamente- no duda en responder con firmeza y pasión qué es lo que lo motiva para practicar el deporte extremo.

“Hay que tener disciplina, fe y cumplir tu sueño, tener esperanza”.

¿Cumples un sueño cada que trepas una tabla?, se le cuestiona.
Me siento emocionado. (Me gusta) La diversión, la adrenalina, la emoción que se siente al bajar una ola. Es muy impresionante. Se siente todo el trabajo que hiciste para llegar ahí.
Aunque se preocupan por su seguridad, los padres de Max lo apoyan incondicionalmente en su carrera como surfista, y él sostiene, que no le toma tanta importancia a los riesgos latentes en el deporte, porque a él lo que más le gusta es cumplir su sueño. Max es uno de los 35 competidores inscritos en la competición.

En la cena Naked Sushi de anoche, cosificando este año a un cuerpo masculino 😜😜 #Budamar #FestivalNudistaZipolite

PGM 233: Hidden Sanctuary 3 by Journeyscapes

Mexican Women Use Sunlight Instead of Firewood or Gas to Cook Meals The solar cookers are low-tech devices that use reflective panels to focus sunlight on a pot in the middle.

https://thewire.in/world/mexican-women-use-sunlight-instead-of-firewood-or-gas-to-cook-meals

Mexican Women Use Sunlight Instead of Firewood or Gas to Cook Meals

The solar cookers are low-tech devices that use reflective panels to focus sunlight on a pot in the middle.

Reyna Díaz checks the marinated pork she is cooking in a solar cooker at her home in a poor neighbourhood of Vicente Guerrero, Villa de Zaachila municipality, in the southwestern Mexican state of Oaxaca. The use of solar cookers has made is possible for 200 local women to save on fuel and stop using firewood, providing environmental and health benefits. Photo: Emilio Godoy/IPS

Emilio Godoy

ENVIRONMENT

WOMEN

WORLD

19/AUG/2019

Villa de Zaachila (Mexico): Reyna Díaz cooks beans, chicken, pork and desserts in her solar cooker, which she sets up in the open courtyard of her home in a poor neighbourhood on the outskirts of this town in southwestern Mexico.

“My family likes the way it cooks things. I use it almost every day, it has been a big help to me,” Díaz told IPS as she mixed the ingredients for cochinita pibil, a traditional pork dish marinated with spices and achiote, a natural colouring.

She then placed the pot on the aluminium sheets of the cooker, which reflect the sunlight that heats the receptacle.

Before receiving the solar cooker in March, Díaz, who sells atole, a traditional hot Mexican drink based on corn or wheat dough, and is raising her son and daughter on her own, did not believe it was possible to cook with the sun’s rays.

“I didn’t know it could be done, I wondered if the food would actually be cooked. It’s a wonderful thing,” said this resident of the poor neighbourhood of Vicente Guerrero, in Villa de Zaachila, a municipality of 43,000 people in the state of Oaxaca, some 475 km south of Mexico City.

Also read: Can India’s Solar Revolution Help Meet Its Paris Agreement Emission Goals?

One thing the inhabitants of Vicente Guerrero have in common is poverty. But although they live in modest houses that in some cases are tin shacks lining unpaved streets and have no sewage system, they do have electricity and drinking water. The women alternate their informal sector jobs with the care of their families.

Diaz used to cook with firewood and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), which she now uses less so it lasts longer. “I’ve saved a lot,” she said.

Women in this neighbourhood were taught how to use the solar cookers and then became promoters, organising demonstrations in their homes to exchange recipes, taste their dishes and spread the word about the benefits and positive changes that the innovative stoves have brought.

The solar cookers are low-tech devices that use reflective panels to focus sunlight on a pot in the middle.

Their advantages include being an alternative for rural cooking, because they make it possible to cook without electricity or solid or fossil fuels, pasteurising water to make it drinkable, reducing logging and pollution, helping people avoid breathing smoke from wood stoves, and using renewable energy.

The drawbacks are that they do not work on rainy or cloudy days, it takes a long time to cook the food, compared to traditional stoves, and they have to be used outdoors.

In Mexico, a country of 130 million people, some 19 million use solid fuels for cooking, which caused some 15,000 premature deaths in 2016 from the ingestion of harmful particles, according to data from the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (Inegi).

Lorena Harp (L), head of a project that promotes the use of solar cookers in Mexico, shows retired teacher Irma Jiménez how to assemble the device, in the poor neighborhood of Vicente Guerrero, Villa de Zaachila municipality, in the southwestern state of Oaxaca. Photo: Emilio Godoy/IPS

The main fuel consumed by 79% of these households is LPG, followed by wood or charcoal (11%) and natural gas (7%).

In Oaxaca, gas and firewood each account for 49% of household consumption.

Of the state’s more than four million inhabitants, 70% were living in poverty in 2016 and nearly 27% in extreme poverty, according to Inegi. Twenty-six percent lived in substandard, crowded housing and 62% lacked access to basic services.

Oaxaca is also one of the three Mexican states with the highest levels of energy poverty, which means households that spend more than 10% of their income on energy.

Solar cookers can help combat the deprivation.

They first began to be distributed in Oaxaca in 2004. In 2008, activists created the initiative “Solar energy for mobile food stalls in Mexico”, sponsored by three Swiss institutions: the city of Geneva, the SolarSpar cooperative and the non-governmental organisation GloboSol.

Cocina Solar Mexico, a collective dedicated to the use of solar energy for cooking, was founded in 2009. With the support of the non-governmental Solar Household Energy (SHE), based in Washington, an economical, light-weight prototype was built.

Also read: How Solar Energy Has Empowered Communities in Rural Assam

In 2016, SHE launched a pilot project in indigenous communities to assess how widely it would be accepted.

“I learned while working with the local women. It was hard, like breaking stones; people knew nothing about it. Now people are more open, because there is more information about the potential of solar energy. In rural areas, people understand it more,” Lorena Harp, head of the initiative, told IPS.

The four-litre pot, which has a useful life of five to 10 years, costs about $25, of which SHE provides half. The group has distributed about 200 solar cookers in 10 communities.

Harp said it is a gender issue, because “women are empowered, they have gained respect in their families.”

The southwestern Mexican state of Oaxaca fails to take advantage of is great solar power potential. The picture shows a rooftop at a solar panel factory in Oaxaca City, the state capital. Photo: Emilio Godoy/IPS

Despite its potential, Oaxaca does not take advantage of its high levels of solar radiation. Last June, it was listed among the 10 Mexican states with the lowest levels of distributed (decentralised) generation, less than 500 kilowatts, connected to the national power grid, according to the government’s Energy Regulatory Commission (CRE).

In the first half of the year, Oaxaca had an installed photovoltaic capacity of 6.69 megawatts with 747 interconnection contracts, in a country where distributed generation only involves solar energy.

This Latin American country registered 17,767 contracts for almost 125 megawatts (MW), almost the same volume as in the same period in 2018 -when they totaled 35,661 for 233.56 MW, although there were more permits. Since 2007, CRE has registered 112,660 contracts for 817.85 MW of solar power.

Luís Calderón, president of the Oaxaca Energy Cluster, says things have evolved quickly.

But “there is a lack of precise, reliable information and certainty about the savings achieved with distributed generation, which is generated for self-consumption while the surplus is fed into the grid. In addition, there is no policy in the state,” Calderón, also a member of the National Solar Energy Association, told IPS.

In 2018, Mexico registered a total installed capacity of 70,000 MW, 3% more than the previous year. Gas-fired combined cycle plants contributed 36%, conventional thermal 17%, hydroelectric 18%, coal almost 8%, wind just under 7%, and solar only 2.6%.

But the government of left-wing President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who took office in December, is driving the exploitation of fossil fuels and standing in the way of the growth of renewable energies.

It plans to modify the Business Ecocredit initiative, led by the government’s Electric Energy Saving Trust for micro, small and medium enterprises for the acquisition of efficient appliances. The measures include eliminating the 14% subsidy and a limit of some 20,000 dollars in financing, but the government has yet to define its future.

Watch: Is This the Dawn of the Solar Age?

In addition, the Oaxaca government’s plan to create two cooperatives for energy for agricultural irrigation does not yet have the 1.75 million dollars needed for two 500-kilowatt solar plants in the municipality of San Pablo Huixtepec to serve 1,200 farmers in 35 irrigation units.

The local women don’t plan to stop using the solar cookers, in a neighbourhood ideal for deploying solar panels and water heaters. “We’re going to keep using it, we’ve seen that it works. We’re going to promote this,” Díaz said, while checking that her stew wasn’t burning.

The SHE assessment found that the solar cookers were widely accepted and have had a positive impact, as nearly half of the local women who use them have reduced by more than 50 percent their use of stoves that cause pollution. Some use the pots up to six times a week, and they have proven to be high quality, durable and affordable. Users also report that the solar cookers have saved them time.

Harp said more partners and government support were needed. “There’s still a long way to go, there are many shortfalls. Something is missing to generate truly widespread use, perhaps a comprehensive policy,” she said.

(IPS)

Psychedelic Trance mix III August 2019