Latest Travel Deals
New DOT Rule: Automatic Cash Refunds for Flight Disruptions & Ban On Junk Fees
April 26, 2024 | Sharad RanabhatTransatlantic Business Class Deals: North America To Europe From $1,836
December 20, 2023 | airlinesandmeI am now an over 4 million miler. I have been privileged to travel to the most amazing places, in a style I would never have thought possible.
Luxury Travel has never been cheap…..but there are ways to make it affordable such as: maximize frequent flyer miles benefit, status match, credit card earnings, industry airfare, news, creative routing, travel engine tools to name but a few.
My first frequent flyer program was United Mileage Plus, I became a member in 1993 and became Premier member in 1994 and the first award ticket I redeemed was a flight from Hong Kong to Tokyo in then Connoisseur (Business) Class!
I keep an eye to look out for the best deals and share on my blog here. You too could travel like I do, everyone can! You just need to pay attention to the details, be good at planning and open to new ideas. Keep your mind set flexible and be persistent!
Stay tuned for my smart travel post, in which I suggest the best ways to travel in luxury, maximizing your value whilst minimizing your costs.
Every week I will share the deals that I believe have the best value so please stay tuned and subscribe.
FAQs
Some of the frequent questions I get every day. I hope you find answers here:
What do you do for a living?
I am a full time aviation blogger and content creator on Youtube.
How can you travel so much?
Every year, I fly around 200k-300k miles. I am constantly writing reviews and sharing my pictures and videos on every trip I make.
How can you afford to travel in First and Business Class?
Travel isn’t free. It does consume a large portion of my disposable income.
I always look out for value deals. There are a few things that will help to lower the cost of airfares:
Maximize frequent flyer miles benefit, status match, credit card earnings, industry airfare, news, creative routing, travel engine tools
For example, use your frequent flyer miles to redeem award travel in First and Business Class.
If you can build in some flexibility on your travel, such as starting from a different city/country the fare may be lower!
The trend of airfare in premium classes are declining over time! We are constantly seeing lower and lower prices in premium classes which are getting very competitive. A lot of these fares required advance booking and offer less flexibility in exchange of lower fares.
Which cities/countries fares are typically lower in premium classes?
Here are a list of cities fares are constantly lower due to declining exchange rate or lower fares historically. Try to structure your trip by depart from these countries to get lower fares:
India, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Egypt, South Africa etc
But the cheap fare isn’t always confined to the above countries. I have seen fares on Transatlantic in Business Class dropping to $1000-1500 regularly on these days.
I am not a frequent flyer, I have no status, no miles, and how can I travel cheaply?
If you only travel once a blue moon and want to travel in luxury but in an affordable way. You need to maintain a flexible outlook. Look out for advance airline promotions and deals; perhaps depart from a city/country that has cheaper fares. Typically, the more time you have on hand, the more advantage you have for planning and research.
You may also consider buying miles directly from an airline and fly. This depends if the advantage/cost of buying miles outweigh buying a revenue ticket and depends on availability as well. Airlines typically release the award seat in advance or at the last minute when they couldn’t sell anymore. So it is important to maintain some degree of flexibility when bargain hunting.
Travel tool you recommend?
I strongly recommend ExpertFlyer. It is a web based travel tool that displays vital data from Travel GDS. You can see the fare listings, real time availability, seat map and create seat/fare alert etc.
I use it on an almost daily basis. By having this information ready, it will help you to travel better!
Expertflyer is a pay subscription tool that cost $99 for 1 year. Alternatively, you can also use ITA Matrix.
Seatguru have comprehensive airplane seat map so you get to know where are the good and preferred seats are and choose ahead of time!
![AirHelp New](https://samchui.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Screen-Shot-2022-10-05-at-11.27.09-AM-300x149.png)
AirHelp helps air passengers around the world secure compensation for delayed, canceled, or overbooked flights.
AirHelp can help you if you have a flight disruption within the EU (on any airline), leaving the EU (on any airline) or arriving into EU (on EU airline).
The European Regulation EC261 rule is an extensive bit of legislation which requires airlines to compensate passengers in the event of:
- Denied boarding
- Flight cancellation
- Long delay of flights (three or more hours)
AirHelp can help you to determine whether you’re eligible for compensation and claims through below easy 1-2-3 steps on their website.