A new job for your husband at the end of the summer means lots of travel. None of the trips are far, but needs to make several trips back and forth between Omaha and Denver and Omaha and Minneapolis. Traveling to meet his team in Denver and to Minneapolis to meet his biggest customer is important as he works to understand his new role with this company. He does not really mind traveling both ways in the same day, especially because it means he does not need to spend a night away from home.
It makes for some very long days and the cheap flights are not typically available, but the fact that there is no rental car and no hotel means that the trips that are billed to the customer are not really that expensive. For your family, this means lots of miles on a couple of airlines that you use on a fairly regular basis. In turn, you hope that these miles will translate into some free tickets that your oldest daughter can use when she flies home from college.
Discount Travel Rates Are Not Always Easy to Find
Depending on when you are traveling and how far in advance you book your flights, cheap tickets are not always available. If, however, you can have flexible travel dates for both arrivals and departures you are more likely to get a better rate. Like many things in life, it is important to know the ins and outs of airline travel if you want to find the most affordable ticket. Not always available to people who are traveling to and from a destination in the same day for work, there are deals to be found if you have the luxury of looking ahead of time, watching for price drops, and adjusting your travel arrangements to take advantage of the lowest rates.
Consider some of these facts and figures about the travel industry and the various aspects of flying both across the nation and around the globe:
- 23% of Millennials say social media significantly influences their choice of a travel destination, so it should come as no surprise that some of the most popular destinations get booked rather quickly. One secret to finding cheap flights is to be the first to book seats on any flight.
- 50% of Millennials and Gen Xers indicate that cost is a barrier to leisure travel, but the smartest travelers make sure that they start their search early for the best flight options.
- One of the reasons that travel is so popular is that 76% of millennials indicate that they would rather spend their money on experiences than material things.
- U.S. travelers went on 458.9 million domestic business trips in 2016, but this figure is predicted to increase to 478.2 million by the year 2020.
- 2.28 million passengers pass through U.S. airports every single day and 5,000 aircraft in the sky at any given moment, according to the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) most recent data.
- Commercial airlines carried more than 3.8 billion passengers and generated $501 billion in global revenue in the year 2016.
Finding cheap flights is not always an option, but if you are able to be a little flexible in the plans that you make you can often find a travel option that is a little more affordable.
