TravelWriterNYC

Hi. Not sure this is the right place to post this, but a nationally syndicated travel writer is looking for real life people who have saved money by booking two separate tickets rather than one "through" ticket (e.g., SFO to London, then a second fare London to Milan rather than one SFO to Milan fare). Last year, BA was selling SFO to London for $199 RT; London to Milan for $99 RT; but SFO to Milan for $500 RT!...that was by phone, and also on BA.com or travelocity.com ... so if you've discovered similar fares and would like your travel savvy highlighted in an internationally famous travel magazine for an upcoming 2004 story, then please get it touch.

SanDiego1K

I just looked at your email address, and wonder if you are the same person who maintains the airfare lists for AOL: Digital City. If so, I find that list enormously helpful in finding my mileage runs.

Last year, I flew to Borneo. I bought a UA ticket from SAN to SIN for $500 and stayed overnight in the transit hotel at the Singapore Airport. In the morning, I flew on to Kuching (Borneo) for about $200. Honestly, I no longer remember what the thru fare is - but today the thru fare is $1850.

fredmartens

I recently booked a SEA-ORD-LHR-ORD-SEA on AA for $333.50, then tacked on an LHR-BCN-LHR (also on AA's site, but on BA/IB metal) for another $146. At the time, SEA-BCN-SEA on one ticket was running around $700.00 with the taxes.

I've also gone SEA-LAX-SEA on AS, then LAX-MCO-LAX on AA for about $150.00 less than the SEA-MCO booked direct through AS ($351.00 for separate tickets vs. $407.00 direct); while not great savings, I was pretty pleased with the extra miles.

TravelWriterNYC

Thanks for sharing--I'll look up fares for that route. These "split" fares are easy to find, but as you know most magazines and newspapers these days love to have real life examples, and since I don't write for that big paper here in NYC I can't make up sources....just kidding. Yes, I am the guy who finds all those fares for AOL/Digital City...I'll bet most mileage runners have never heard of us.

bennytma

Likewise, last year I flew on two tickets to Capetown. I purchased one ticket US to London for about $500 and a second ticket (through a British travel agency) for the London-Capetown round-trip segments for approximately $650. Thru fare for the same dates were pricing at upwards of $2,500.

Similarly, this past summer I had a free economy class ticket from the US to London and then redeemed miles for a separate business class ticket London-Bangkok-Delhi-London. A paid fare for this itinerary must have been somewhere around $5,000.

Hope that this helps.
Happy Travels

satori

Digital City is a wonderful resource that has helped me over the last few years in planning mileage runs. Now that I think about it Digital City is what helped me locate a 7 segment $99 fare between Boise and Portland when I was doing the Alaska Airlines mileage run for 100,000 miles.

I have purchased several SFO-LHR tickets with UA and then fly British Midlands or BA from LHR-AMS to save $100 or more over the UA fare from SFO-AMS.

FOOLISHRUNNER

I also want to thank all of the people involved in the Digital City site as I have bookmarked it with DTW and it also shows FNT, TOL, GRR, LAN, and AZO all on one page so you can compare cities. I go there first to see what fares are cheapest to all cities that are shown and then to go to the airline specific sites to get the best deal. The airline sites are not very friendly when searching for the best fares unless you already know what dates and times are the best.

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rbAA

I had one last year that generated an additional 10200 status miles. I nested three RT's:

1. a BKK-HKG-BKK RT on Finnair for US$150 (purchased ex-BKK) inside
2. a JFK-NRT-BKK RT on AA for US$771 inside
3. a SJC-JFK RT on AA for $198.

The ITN (SJC-JFK-NRT-BKK-HKG-BKK-NRT-JFK-SJC) wouldn't price less than $2500 with the stopovers in JFK, BKK and HKG. The SJC-NRT-BKK fare alone on AA was $880, so it would have been $1030 with the HKG RT.

Tough part was the return on Monday 9/29, with flights consisting of:

BKK-NRT-JFK-SJC for 12,170 miles in one day.

I LOVE EWR

You have mail.

The NWA kid

YGM

chemist661

A friend in Hong Kong wanted to go to Lima, Peru. The fare last summer for Hong Kong-Lima was $3500. That was what their travel agent quoted. I told the person to check another travel agent & have them do a "split" fare Hong Kong-Los Angeles & Los Angeles-Lima. The fare HGK-LAX was about $1000 & LAX-Lima was about $450. I told the friend to have their travel agent "interline" the ticket & his agent came up with a very good fare (approx $1400)& better dates than what I came up with. The trip went well & my friend was quite thankful for the savings.

dd

i did this last year (and am doing this this year again) when i wanted to go from boston to india, which is normally more than $1100, or a bit less through a consolodator, but in high season, it's hard to get seats... anyway, i get a bos-bkk flight on ua for around $600 (after using 15% coupon on a vlapth fare) + taxes and then bkk-bom return on tg for around $400 including taxes (from www.thaiair.com or a bit cheaper from a local consolidator in thailand, last year i took a cheaper fare on indian airlines, but i won't make that mistake again this year!). anyway, i fly bos-sfo-lax-hnl-nrt-bkk and return the same way for just under 25k miles (plus 1k bonus and other bonuses), plus i will get about 3k ua miles for the bkk-bom-bkk trip on tg. i get one free stopover on the way and use it in nrt and one forced night in hnl on the way out there, where i visit a friend (bus is $1.50 each way from airport to anywhere on the island). this way i get to earn tons of miles on united, get 1/4 of the way to 1k in one trip, get to visit bkk, where i like to go diving, visit friends in tokyo, and go to india all for around $1000, which is less than i would pay for a connecting ticket on most other airlines...

anyway, that's my story

dhacker

Thanks for the Digital City deals site! I'm a big fan. use it almost every day, and post some of the best deals here. Examples from the past:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/Forum...ML/004430.html

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/Forum...ML/005317.html

My suggestion to increase traffic is to restructure the site to make your pages easier to find and use. I have a bookmark set, but I just tried to navigate from http://www.digitalcity.com and couldn't find you. A single alternate domain name (e.g. digitalcityfares.com) for direct access would help too. Travel publications and other sites could then post a single URL rather than separate URL's for each city. The existing city index could be used as a single starting point, but this leads to the "Travel & Booking" pages which only link to you through the mislabeled link "See All Travel Bargains" which in fact contain only your great airfare alerts.

[This message has been edited by dhacker (edited Jan 06, 2004).]

TravelWriterNYC

Thanks for all the good words about digitalcity... we do have a central site at www.digitalcity.com/travel and it is pretty hard to find us using www.digitalcity.com -- we've been buried. It's amazing anyone can find us

FOOLISHRUNNER

I actually had a great savings for a business class trip to China in September where a ticket from Detroit was $5,500, but if I bought a coach ticket to Seattle for $330, I could buy a $1,250 business class ticket to China. Since I'm Platinum, I knew that I had a 90%+ chance of being upgraded to first on the domestic leg anyway which it turns I was upgraded both ways. I had to leave more room for connections on the return since I had 2 tickets and I couldn't count on a hour being enough on an international arrival to make my Seattle to Detroit return flight.

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