Ah, the lure of cheap travel. I love it. I even subscribe to alerts for travel deals every morning in my inbox. Recently though, I almost got trapped by an airline selling cheap tickets that would have cost me more than full price for another airline.
It all started when I began researching a recent trip I was planning. I started looking for deals on Momondo a month ago. I just started monitoring to see if the flight costs were going to drop or start going the other way.
I love Momondo, and I don’t blame them a bit for the price gouge or bait-n-switch, as I like to think of it. The airline in question, which will go unnamed in this article, used Momondo to set the trap. Here is the thing.
The airline, technically, did nothing wrong. They just played the system perfectly. Let me explain how it all worked out.
Cheap travel; How does Momondo work?
Momondo is an excellent cheap travel search engine with some cool filtering features to help find the best deals on airfare, hotels, and car rental. It’s even got a little travel blog area with some pretty good travel articles.
I like Skyscanner too, but ever since I got turned on to Momondo by the travel vloggers Kara and Nate, I stopped using Skyscanner.
On Momondo, you enter all the search criteria for your flight plans at the top; then after the search comes up, you can use the filters on the side to best narrow down your choices. Once you find the flight you want, you click on the booking button and book your trip directly through the airline.
Momondo is strictly a search engine pulling data which is published by airlines. If the airline publishes the low fare, Momondo picks it up and puts the flight plans together.
Cheap travel; So, what happened in the trap?
On this day, in particular, I found the round-trip flight I wanted. It was pretty cheap. The initial flight out was through a major airline which I have used often and enjoyed. I booked the flight out. The major airline included a free carry-on bag with the ticket and charged $25 for a checked bag. This is pretty common now, nothing earth-shattering there.
I also upgraded my wife and me to the next tier service so I could pick our seats ahead of time. The only way I could guarantee we sat together was with the upgrade. Otherwise, we would have to fill in seats at check-in. I like to sit together. Even with the upgrade, the fight was still pretty cheap.
The return flight was through a lesser-known airline. It was advertised as being incredibly cheap. I mean ridiculously so. I was suspicious of the trap, so while I started going through the booking process, I always kept my eye on the shopping cart amount.
I started to catch on when I began to click the boxes to equal the upgrades I had on the other flight. Midway through the process, my wife called and told me a coworker of hers had been almost trapped by an advertised cheap flight recently. When he was done with his booking, the publicized cheap flight was way more than full price at another airline.
Cheap travel; How did this all end up?
I knew something was up, but I kept pressing ahead to see how bad it got. When I finally got to the pay screen, the second flight ended up being between $40 and $50 more than the initial flight.
All the add-ons and hidden fees had almost got me paying more than I should have. I think, once the mind becomes locked into the initial price, it’s easy to upsell each little piece. The customer usually clicks without really watching the final price.
When I saw it, I backed out of the deal and went back to Momondo to search out a different flight by my original airline. I did find a comparable return flight. Even though I ended up paying more than I was initially hooked on, I still got a pretty good deal.
I could have saved a little more money on these flights, but my wife and I hardly ever go on a flying vacation, so I thought it was worth the added extras. What I didn’t expect was such a drastic price jump. The advertised price started out around $35 one way per ticket, which is alarmingly low I know, to almost $190 per ticket.
The other airline came in at around $145 per ticket. I don’t believe they did anything illegal. Maybe just a little unethical. They prayed on the fact that people go to these travel websites to find outstanding deals.
They just manipulated their pricing structure to be more a carte. Things other airlines included in their structure were extra for them. Then there seemed to be an exceptionally high tax and fee structure built in to hit after you begin the booking process.
So, what did I learn from all this? If there is an extremely low airfare, it might be too good to be true. Maybe once in a while, you might run across something insanely cheap, but I know enough now to beware.
Till next time, be safe,
Kevin