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Alternative Routes - How You Can Benefit From Using Them
By admin | March 14, 2008
This is an ancient topic but it will never die as it keeps giving battle to all us who try to look for the best options when it comes to flying. There is really no exact methodology to know how much an alternative route will benefit with your flight.
If you are going to travel to any destination in the world, many times it will happen that a direct flight will not be the best option relative to the price. I have written a lot about alternative airports but there is a big difference between an alternative airport and an alternative route. When we speak about airports we mean those ones that are placed near to the one where we would take the direct flight to. And near means a maximum of 100 Kilometers, to set an example.
Instead, when we speak about alternative routes, that could mean that instead of flying from Miami to London, maybe for some reason a stop in New York or in Toronto will benefit us. That is an alternative route, and it is open to unlimited possibilities, as many as airports offers the world. And this is the real tricky thing, and why alternative airports can be found following a structured process and alternative routes is something a lot more difficult.
For instance, many search engines will never be able to work truly with alternative routes, and if they do, they will find extremely expensive flights where your best option will always be the direct flight. That’s why I always say that search engines are not here to help you find the cheapest flights, but are here to help you get a reference and then go lowering the price by other means.
In any case, the best recommendation I will give when it comes to find alternative routes is to check every special deals website we can. There are many places specialized in that, and the one I prefer overall is TravelZoo. It has many deals from the US, Canada, UK, France, Germany, China, Australia, etc. What this guys do is to list every week the top20 hottest travel deals from your location. The idea, far from being to find exactly your destination route (which is possible) is to locate alternative highly discounted routes, that sometimes can even include staying some days in a stopover in the country where the airline belongs to with some free hotel nights and stuff like this.
Do not hesitate and take a look at all this deals. When you find a good deal from one place to your destination, or from your place to an intermediate point, it is the time to check the price for flights covering the rest of the route, specially checking all the low cost carriers. There are many web-pages that have listing of low cost carriers. Continental flights are impossible for me to list here as there are hundreds of airlines that do this trips, but for intercontinental ones there are specially two airlines I always emphasize in checking: Oasis Hong Kong and Zoom Airlines. Zoom provides the low cost service linking Europe with America and Oasis links Europe with Asia, and Asia with America. Soon it will also link Asia with Australia.
After all, it will really depend on the time you have to do this. If you have time and experience, just go for it. If not, look for the services of anybody. Most people will make you pay for that. Some others work like me and offer to answer to this little questions for free by simply dropping an e-mail. Simply take what fits best your needs and your pocket.
To find out help in planning your trips to Europe or South Pacific:
Travel to Europe
To check how I get 80% discounted 4-star Hotels:
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For general information on traveling around the world:
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Dani Alonso
Tags: alternative flights, alternative routes, cheap flights, holidays, travel to europe, trip, vacations
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