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Trick it / negotiate it / special savings lounge thread

Old Nov 20, 2013, 7:48 am
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Last edit by: Pat89339
Do not call the airlines under any conditions! This is the fastest way to kill the trick and bring unwanted attention to your itinerary! And do not post precious deals in this thread, this is by far the fastest way to kill the trick!



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This is NOT the right place to ask: "Can you help me with a low fare for AAA-BBB?" This is not the beg-it thread, but the trick-it thread.

This thread deals with unique combinations of routes and booking tricks in order to lower prices on airline fares. Prices that would astound the general public are often achieved by the posters in this thread.

Many people, including airline representatives, monitor this thread. For that reason, it is unorganized, very content heavy, often lacking details, and written in shorthand. It takes patience and effort in order to understand the conversation and be able to participate as an active member.

We encourage you to read the entirety of this thread if you would like to get started and to experiment as soon as you understand the gist of Trick It. Lots of time spent reading, practicing, and learning is the only way to be able to reproduce our tricks and discover new ones yourself. There are many, many people who ask for advice here, so productive members are only able to help those who have shown a concerted effort and progress over a long period of time (months).

If you have no idea what this thread is about, a good place to start are various blogs' posts on the subject. At the very least, read the Rules for posting in this thread. They're also listed in the very first post, below.

Older portions of the thread have been separated into archive thread by year. They are listed below

2008 Trick It / negotiate it / special savings lounge thread
2009 Trick It / negotiate it / special savings lounge thread
2010 Trick It / negotiate it / special savings lounge thread
2011 Trick It / negotiate it / special savings lounge thread
2012 Trick It / negotiate it / special savings lounge thread
2013 Trick It / negotiate it / special savings lounge thread
2014 Trick It / negotiate it / special savings lounge thread
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Trick it / negotiate it / special savings lounge thread

Old Apr 16, 2017, 3:21 pm
  #8116  
 
Join Date: Apr 2017
Posts: 2
Smile New here

Originally Posted by WingedWorldExplorer
USA to Greece Non-Stop $ 265.92 All-in R/T.

Bookable.
Hey i'm ive been following this thread for a few days and still kinda confused as to how these deals work. Where do I find the Greece deal you are talking about?
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Old Apr 16, 2017, 5:09 pm
  #8117  
 
Join Date: Oct 2016
Location: LEJ, BOG
Posts: 25
Originally Posted by madiha90
Hey i'm ive been following this thread for a few days and still kinda confused as to how these deals work. Where do I find the Greece deal you are talking about?
Hallo madiha90. I am quite new myself and cant speak for the community, however in my experience so far theres a lot of people in this thread who have been doing FDing for a many years, making this quite a complex craft. As in most crafts youre supposed to start from scratch and learn by doing the nasty and annoying work, in this case researching and reading (a lot). Nobody will give you any freebes - after all none were handed any when they were apprentices [at least thats the general narrative - I doubt it].
That has two reasons: If FDing was easy, everyone and their mom would do it - making it something with an impact to Airlines and making the airlines change the rules. Secondly, it wont really help you if people told you dumps, but you dont know the how. You might be able to use some tricked fare somebody told you, but you wouldnt be able to find your own ones and wont be able to contribute. However, if you ask people specific questions, most will be very helpful.

If I had to start again I would do it with the following approach:
Find out what the general idea behind FDing is. Google is your friend, theres good stuff on milepoint.com: What are Fares, when can a fare be dumped?
Then learn about the most important constructions, id est 1x and 3x. Theres much more out there, but for starters keep it simple. Try to figure out what would make a good 3x. Which criteria would maximize saving?
Learn how to use matrix.itasoftware.com.
With this background-knowledge and read this thread, maybe the first and last 100 pages. Take notes on ideas and possible dumps.

That should get you started. As a warning: this is very time consuming and very addictive. Generally speaking it is more efficient earning money during the time you would be spending here and just buy the full fare. You decide. Good luck and welcome!

Last edited by Jboucsei; Apr 16, 2017 at 5:21 pm
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Old Apr 16, 2017, 5:22 pm
  #8118  
C W
 
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Originally Posted by madiha90
Hey i'm ive been following this thread for a few days and still kinda confused as to how these deals work. Where do I find the Greece deal you are talking about?
Jboucsei has given you some very good advice. I would follow it and I second the recommendation to take the time to read (at least) the first 100 pages of this thread and the 100 most recent pages. I wouldn't expect to be finding your first dump without several weeks of working every evening first.

Originally Posted by Jboucsei
That should get you started. As a warning: this is very time consuming and very addictive. Generally speaking it is more efficient earning money during the time you would be spending here and just buy the full fare. You decide. Good luck and welcome!
Truer words have never been said
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Old Apr 16, 2017, 5:51 pm
  #8119  
 
Join Date: Aug 2015
Location: BUD
Programs: DL Gold, AS MVP Gold
Posts: 94
Originally Posted by madiha90
Hey i'm ive been following this thread for a few days and still kinda confused as to how these deals work. Where do I find the Greece deal you are talking about?
For this specific deal, you should try to understand how fueldumping works. Even though this thread is not so friendly, google is a very good friend on this question. Once you're done with that, look after direct flights between any greek airports and any USA airports. Let me tell you, thats not really a long list. Once you have that, read back the most recent 100 pages in the thread, and try to understand every post, which contains the iata code of the chosen airline.
Hint: the OP of the deal, has posted almost the same deal a few weeks ago.
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Old Apr 16, 2017, 7:52 pm
  #8120  
 
Join Date: Apr 2017
Posts: 2
Thank you!

Originally Posted by e30st
For this specific deal, you should try to understand how fueldumping works. Even though this thread is not so friendly, google is a very good friend on this question. Once you're done with that, look after direct flights between any greek airports and any USA airports. Let me tell you, thats not really a long list. Once you have that, read back the most recent 100 pages in the thread, and try to understand every post, which contains the iata code of the chosen airline.
Hint: the OP of the deal, has posted almost the same deal a few weeks ago.
Thank you everyone! i wasn't expecting everyone to be so nice and actually try and explain it to me lol i was expecting more of a you should know this before commenting kinda replies. But I really appreciate all your help!
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Old Apr 16, 2017, 7:53 pm
  #8121  
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Originally Posted by madiha90
Thank you everyone! i wasn't expecting everyone to be so nice and actually try and explain it to me lol i was expecting more of a you should know this before commenting kinda replies. But I really appreciate all your help!
We all had to start somewhere

Just don't expect it to be easy
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Old Apr 17, 2017, 9:06 am
  #8122  
 
Join Date: May 2007
Location: Chicagoland
Posts: 375
Originally Posted by madiha90
Thank you everyone! i wasn't expecting everyone to be so nice and actually try and explain it to me lol i was expecting more of a you should know this before commenting kinda replies. But I really appreciate all your help!
FDing is the next frontier for me. With the help of several FTers, I was able to learn how to work GF, ITA, EF, and other tools to score many sweet deals for us over the last several years. It took time to learn, but I had great teachers and did the research.

To me, though, learning how to effectively FD with the (necessarily) cryptic information that's out there is like trying to learn Mandarin with no teacher. You're politely told to RTFM, but 85% of the "manual" is written in Mandarin.

It's definitely worthwhile to learn, and I've been very willing to put in the time and effort to learn what I have. But I tell ya, I'd treat an expert who'd let me watch how they research FDs for a few hours to a very nice dinner.
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Old Apr 19, 2017, 8:28 am
  #8123  
 
Join Date: May 2005
Location: NYC
Posts: 1,755
Originally Posted by KarlPedal
c4b-c1.5 one-way, ~5000 miles flown in business class for $400
awesome!
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Old Apr 20, 2017, 9:19 am
  #8124  
 
Join Date: Apr 2017
Posts: 1
First post on this forum, and haven't used forums in general for a long time.
I'm quite new to this world, reading about it since just a few days. I think I found a good flight from C2 to eC3, RT. It's already cheap but it's composed of 70 basic fare, and 342 YR. (excluding other taxes). Is there a way to pay less for the YR? maybe adding a 3x? How do I find it?
Sorry in advance if I breaked any rule, I hope someone will help me.
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Old Apr 20, 2017, 9:24 am
  #8125  
 
Join Date: Dec 2013
Location: Valencia, Spain
Programs: Pascal and Python, no C++
Posts: 738
Welcome idoafter.
If you don't have too much experience with forums in general, here's the first step to get you started: read the Wiki (at the top of each page).
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Old Apr 20, 2017, 2:03 pm
  #8126  
 
Join Date: Apr 2017
Location: C2
Posts: 649
Newbie

I'm also new here. This is really fun and addictive. However, not so productive. I've spent app. 6h/day during the last 3-4 weeks on reading the tread and searching for fds. So far I have realised that this is not the place to beg for hints, just because you need to visit your uncle in xxx. This is a hobby, not an travel agency. Since I'm new, but actually have read several hundreds pages I would first of all say thanks to all longtime contributors. Especially WWE's hints and riddles are entertaining, even if I have no chances in hell to solve 99% of them. (yet)😊
So far I have found a handful of decent working 3Xs.
Some 1X's, of which only one seems to be OTAble. The ai prices not much to brag about. But, I'm not complaining, this is all about the hunt. 😀
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Old Apr 20, 2017, 4:03 pm
  #8127  
 
Join Date: May 2016
Posts: 16
Originally Posted by WingedWorldExplorer
USA to Greece Non-Stop $ 265.92 All-in R/T.

Bookable.
Any hints as to what airline/alliance I should be looking at? I've been having trouble finding a strike on TK and MS...
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Old Apr 20, 2017, 4:11 pm
  #8128  
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Originally Posted by warrenbisch
Any hints as to what airline/alliance I should be looking at? I've been having trouble finding a strike on TK and MS...
There aren't many candidate fares since you've been give that it's a non-stop. Finding that fare is the easy part.
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Old Apr 20, 2017, 4:21 pm
  #8129  
 
Join Date: May 2016
Posts: 16
Originally Posted by C W
There aren't many candidate fares since you've been give that it's a non-stop. Finding that fare is the easy part.
I missed that detail. Thanks for the help!!
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Old Apr 20, 2017, 5:09 pm
  #8130  
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Location: New York Metropolitan Area 45 km from JFK
Programs: UA,AA,AS,BA
Posts: 4,607
Originally Posted by C W
There aren't many candidate fares since you've been give that it's a non-stop. Finding that fare is the easy part.
Exactly ! Every word and every letter has meaning. What's to miss ?
Can actually also be used as C1-C2 Double Open Jaw ("DOJ")
C1a1-ATH//xxx-C1a2 + FD drop.

Last edited by WingedWorldExplorer; Apr 20, 2017 at 5:25 pm
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