How to Research and Buy Discount International Flights

Some people procrastinate by reading magazines or shopping online. My way of taking a mental time-out involves trying to find airfare deals including discount international flights.

This is how I wound up doing my Christmas shopping in Seoul. I used the techniques I’m about to outline below to score a business class international flight from San Diego (via DFW) to Seoul that was about the same price as an economy class ticket to Asia can be.

Why There Is No Need to Pay Full Price

With airlines tightening mileage ticket availability, redeeming mileage to fully purchase or upgrade flights is becoming increasingly hard to do. Miles, in my opinion, also have a dollar value. If an economy or business class ticket is at a low enough price point, it may not make sense to use them.

The lack of premium seat mileage ticket availability used to mean that we’d buy business or first class tickets through the airlines, but there is a better way. An entirely different option involves purchasing unpublished fares that the general public does not have access to without going through an authorized agent, which I’ll detail below.

There are plenty of services that have access to these fares but it incredibly important do book through a trustworthy agent who isn’t a reseller of mileage tickets (a service that isn’t technically allowed by many frequent flier programs).

Where to Research Discount International Flights

I am a huge believer that knowledge is power though. You need to feel good about the price you pay no matter where you buy or what class of service you book. This means that you need to do a little legwork. I am overly-obsessive about researching airfare so here’s what I do.

Check Prices on Google Flights

In my opinion, Google Flights is the best way for the average person to research airfare. Take a few minutes to learn how it works because it can perform several helpful tasks from monitoring flight prices (and emailing you when they change) to showcasing destinations on a map with pricing from your home airport on specific dates.

The latter is helpful for people who want to travel but don’t know exactly where to go. It’s called the Explore Destinations feature. For example, I randomly plugged in business class flights from San Diego to Mexico and this is what popped up.

You can also scroll through an entire year’s worth of airfare on your preferred airline so that you know when the cheapest time to fly to a preferred destination is.

Google is not a travel agent so they’ll send you directly to the airline for booking if you click on a link (though they may receive an affiliate commission). I read that the only airline not represented is Southwest because they do not allow external programs to access their ticket pricing information.

Google Flights can send email alerts when prices rise and fall. This service is invaluable since, for example, business class flights from San Diego to Shanghai have risen and fallen between $1800 – $4500 per person over the last few months that I’ve been watching them.

Other price comparison sites like Skyscanner, are less reliable than Google Flights (in my opinion) because some of the airfare discounters they populate in their results (usually the cheapest ones) do not display real-time price fluctuations. This means some of the data may be old. And, they show results from lesser-known travel sites some of which, when you dig deep, have significant online complaints.

Read FlyerTalk

Bookmark the premium class thread in FlyerTalk thread. Here, members post premium class deals they’ve seen, booked or already traveled on. Usually, these fares are geared toward earning the most amount of miles per dollar spent. The threads look like this.

This is where I saw the Google Flights link for a deal on business class to Seoul, which I eventually booked.

Note that many FlyerTalk members are savvy flyers who are keen to see the world while maintaining frequent flier status and earning and many redeemable miles possible. You’ll see a lot of airline lingo. For example, it’s worth knowing what fare classes like “J” or “I” mean because this determines how many frequent flier miles you’ll earn.

Know Your Fare Class

Tip: I always, always know my fare class before booking a flight. I then refer to the American Airlines fare class chart (each airline frequent flier program has a similar chart) to see how many miles and elite qualifying miles I’ll earn based on the fare class I book.

When you buy discount business class tickets or discount first class tickets, these do not always earn miles and often times you won’t know if you’ll earn miles until after the trip is complete. Asking what the fare class is before you book will help eliminate the risk of zero miles earned.

The Bottom Line

In most cases, you do not need to pay retail price for airfare and you can find discount international flights in premium classes like Cathay Pacific first class and Japan Airlines business class.

How do you buy discount international flights?