Secrets to Finding Cheap Flights and Avoiding Fees, Straight from Scott’s Cheap Flights

Megan, I want to know from you, what is the wildest travel myth you've heard?

Oh, I love the people who swear the cheapest airfares come out on Tuesdays. It's not a Trader Joe's restock, people.
Yes, I totally hear things like that. I think we agree that there is no best day to book airfare as it really depends on so many factors.
Yeah, there's so many myths like that that just need to be busted. I think I know the person who would be perfect to bust some flight booking myths.
Welcome to Smart Travel, a deep dive into the tips, tools, and tactics to maximize your travel dollars. I'm Megan Coyle.
And I'm Sally French. And we're the travel nerds ready to help you plan your next big trip.
And today is a special episode because we brought on another travel expert to help you find the deals. Stay tuned for an interview with Scott Keyes, the founder of Going, which is a flight deal service.
But first, some news. So our first topic is credit cards related.
So here is our usual spiel. We'll talk about a few credit card companies that are NerdWallet partners in this episode, but that does not influence how we discuss them.
Chase just announced a slew of new benefits to the United Airlines co-branded cards. The United Gateway card, which is the $0 annual fee card, now has two free checked bags each year.
To be clear, you only get those after you spend $10,000 in a calendar year with your United Gateway card. Yeah, so that might be unrealistic to actually hit that $10,000 spending threshold.
Don't go out of your way to spend that money if it's something you wouldn't do otherwise. But at least this benefit is maybe better than a poke

in the eye. And some more bad news.
The United Explorer card is going up in price. It will now

have a $0 intro fee for the first year, then $150. That's up from the previous annual fee,

which also had a $0 intro fee and then $95 per year. Sadly, I think $150 is the new $95.
You know, I'm thinking about another card, like the Delta SkyMiles Gold. That's the equivalent card in the Delta family of cards.
It also has the same $0 intro annual fee for the first year, and then it's $150 after that. And you're kind of seeing the same thing with mid-tier cards as well.
The United Quest card is increasing its annual fee by $100 to $350, but it also added some perks like a $200 United travel credit. This is instead of the previous $125 United flight credit, and this is annually.
So each year you get that kind of discount on a United flight. There is also a new 10,000 mile award flight discount.
That's every year and 1,000 card bonus PQP each qualification year starting in 2026. PQPs are what you need to earn elite status.
Oh, and one fun one I'll add is up to $150 in credits on JSX purchases annually. JSX is a semi-private flight service where you can fly in these small private jets that can usually hold up to 30 people.
And we're going to talk about JSX later, in fact. Oh, and let's finish out these United Card updates.
I'll make it quick. The annual fee on the United Club Card is also increasing from $525 to $695.
Oh, yikes. That's a lot.
Yeah, it's sad. The lounge membership fee is going up too.
So it's slightly cheaper to pay the annual fee on the United Club card if you can get approved for it, even with this higher annual fee. But still, that's a lot of money to spend on a single airline card.
Okay, so did they at least add any other benefits to make up for it? Yeah, there are a lot of new benefits, but some of them you have to earn. So they're not automatic.
I will point out some of the ones that do seem worthwhile. Up to $150 in credits on rideshare purchases annually, if you use Uber or Lyft a lot.
Up to $200 in credits on JSX purchases annually. And $1,500 card bonus PQP each qualification year starting in 2026.
Now, this is starting to sound exhausting with all these different credits and you have to spend a certain amount to get them. Some of them are only given to you in certain increments.
So it's a lot of work to start keeping track of all of these things. Of course, we would be here forever if we talked about every new benefit on these cards.
So we'll put a link in our show notes to the NerdWallet article about all the changes to the United cards. Okay, so speaking of airline ride share benefits, if you were used to earning Delta miles from your Lyft rides, that will end on April 7th.
So the two companies were partners, but Delta has broken up with Lyft. In fact, they replaced Lyft with Uber.
A breakup where they already have their next partner lined up. Once the Delta and Uber partnership officially kicks off, SkyMiles members will be able to earn miles for eligible rides and deliveries across the U.S.
once they link their Uber and SkyMiles accounts. You can earn one mile per dollar spent on UberX rides to and from airports and one mile per dollar spent on restaurant and grocery orders of $40 or more via Uber Eats, which is the company's food delivery Of course, fancy rides earn more, so you can earn two miles per dollar spent on restaurant and grocery orders of $40 or more via Uber Eats, which is the company's food delivery arm.
Of course, fancy rides earn more, so you can earn two miles per dollar spent on Uber Comfort or Uber Black. You'll also earn three miles per dollar spent via Uber Reserve, which is basically a scheduled ride service.
This allows you to request trips in advance. Moving right along, booking partner airlines with Air Canada points may cost you more now.
The Air Canada Aeroplan loyalty program just switched to dynamic pricing yesterday for a few of their airline partners. Previously, they had this nice little award chart.
You remember that? And it made it so predictable to know how many points you would need for an award flight. That's such a bummer.
The prices were good too. So I guess now you'll see dynamic pricing for United, Emirates, Etihad, a few other smaller airline partners when you book flights on those carriers with Air Canada Aeroplan points.
Womp womp. I feel like we should have a sound effect for devaluations.
Oh, make it happen. Playing the points in a miles game does feel like being on a game show sometimes.
Now let's go back to JSX, that semi-private jet service we mentioned earlier. Why don't we tell people a little more about what it is? So with JSX, instead of going through a regular airport and its standard security, you'll board in a private hangar.
Plus, JSX has partnerships with both JetBlue and United, so you can earn frequent flyer miles for either of those programs when you fly JSX. That sounds so awesome, like this private jet experience walking out on the tarmac.
But how much is it? Yeah, so it's definitely more expensive than your standard airline, but much cheaper than a true private jet. So if you're looking at something like a flight from LAX to, let's say, Las Vegas, obviously airfares fluctuate.
But you can find a flight on JSX for something like $250, $300. Now, you can probably find a flight on that same route on a standard carrier, sometimes for less than $100.
But that's so much less than probably the thousands you would pay for a private jet that it can be at least worth the experience for some people. And with some of those credits on the United cards, like the $150 credit, I mean, that $250 credit became a $100 flight to Vegas one way, which isn't too terrible.
So let's go to the new JSX updates. And that is that JSX has just unveiled a new list of destinations that will begin offering service in May or June.
Those include Santa Fe, New Mexico, Destin, Florida, and Monterey, California. Those routes will go between existing cities that JSX already serves.
I'm talking about locations like Dallas and Las Vegas. Should we go to the Monterey Aquarium, Sally? Oh, yes, field trip.
Sally, I've been so excited ever since you told me you landed this guest because I've been following him for a long time. Yes, our guest today is Scott Keyes, the founder of the Flight Deals Alert Service Going.
I've been on Scott's email list for years, back when it was called Scott's Cheap Flight. Same.
I think the best deal I got was that $317 round trip flight from California to Beijing. Oh my gosh.
It was so cheap. It was crazy.
And even more recently, I booked a deal to Edinburgh, Scotland. And it was $500 round trip from Washington, D.C.
And the dates were perfect because it lined up with my childhood friend's wedding in Scotland. And Scotland's not the most common destination.
Like most people fly to London and then either take another short flight or a train. But I'm always really impressed with the variety of destinations that Scott and his team are able to find deals for.
Really cool spots. I flew to Croatia because I found a deal through him.
I booked a flight to Hong Kong from San Francisco. That was about $500 per person.
Often, I think these flights to foreign countries are cheaper than what I pay to go see my parents in Missouri. And that's the reason Scott started the company in the first place, because he found a killer flight deal back in 2013.
I think it was between New York and Milan. Yes, and it cost him $130.
Now, granted, that was 2013. Inflation has happened since then.
It might be more difficult to find that exact price now, but still amazing. So after that trip, he built this company dedicated to sharing fare alerts.
And some of them are just really good deals, like sales or something. And some are mistake fares, like when an airline accidentally forgets to add a digit and the $1,500 airfare might be listed for $500.
So they have a freemium model where you can get some fare alerts for free. If you join their premium service, which starts at $49 per year, you can get more custom alerts and even more deals.
I did find my Hong Kong flight using the free version, so I think the free version is honestly good enough. Today, Going has a staff of about 50 people and has served an estimated 2 million travelers.
And over that time, Scott has amassed tons of great insights on how they find these deals and how you can find amazing airfare deals too. All right, without further ado, Sally, take it away to your interview with Scott.
All right. Well, Scott Keyes, welcome to Smart Travel.
Thanks for being here. Thanks so much for having me.
Okay. Well, I'm excited to have you as a guest on our show.
I hear so many people talk about flight myths, and one of them is just about when to book, when to fly. In your opinion, is there a golden rule for when to book flights, or is it all a myth anyway? Yeah, look, I think the fact that there are so many different rules about when you're supposed to should kind of be the tip off that it's a little bit of a myth.
Like you've heard Tuesday at 1 p.m., Saturday at midnight, exactly 63 days before. These are all recommendations that I've heard.
And they're all wrong. I think this is why that they're wrong.
You can go back and calculate last year's airfares and find the exact cheapest day for flights just in the same way you can go back and calculate the stock market and find the single best day for stock performance. That just doesn't tell you anything about what the single best day for

stock performance this year is going to be. You know, look, maybe it was March 7th last year,

but if you bought stocks on March 7th this year, you might find yourself losing a lot of money.

So that's why I think it's the wrong way to approach it. Instead, the best way to do it,

the way that we recommend is something called the Goldilocks window. Not too early, not too late, just right in the middle.
And so if you're traveling, for instance, domestically during off-peak travel dates, about one to three months in advance, that's when you have the best odds of a cheap flight popping up. If you're going during a peak travel period, summer, Christmas, New Year, something like that, three to six months in advance for those domestic flights.
But international, more like two to eight months off peak, four to 10 months during peak travel period. That's the best way to get the timing of your booking right.
What is the number one mistake people make when they're looking for airfare? Yeah, look, I think that most people say they want cheap flights. And then the way they go about trying to find cheap flights is the exact opposite right approach.
Here's what I mean. We all say, oh, I really want to get cheap flights.
Airfare is so expensive. And then we do a three-step process when we search for flights.
Step one, we decide where we want to go. Step two, we decide when we want to go there.
And step three, we look, well, what are the prices cost? What are the flights at? Does that sound about right, Sally? Does that sound like the way that you might search for flights usually? That's how definitely most normal people go. I think you and I are a little different.
That's true. That's true.
But look, by setting price as the last priority, it's not terribly surprising we end up with some pretty expensive flights. And so what I tell folks is like, look, if cheap flights are our priority, make them the priority.
Take that same three-step process and reverse your search. Step one, where are there cheap flights available right now out of my home airport, knowing that that changes every day? Step two, of those places that are available cheap right now, which one interests me the most? Where would I like to go? And step three, what dates do they have those cheap flights available that work for my schedule? So by setting prices the top priority rather than the last priority, that's how you end up being able to get cheap flights and take three or four vacations for the same price you used to pay for one.
Yeah, and it definitely sounds like being open-minded to location is the way to go. And that's how I've found some of my most exciting locations.
I went to Croatia randomly just because there was a cheap flight and I would have not gone to Croatia otherwise. Totally.
It's funny you mentioned that exact destination. I remember interviewing a couple for a book I wrote a few years back, and they had the exact same experience where a mistake fare from Columbus, Ohio to Zagreb, Croatia.
That's where I went to. Oh my goodness.
Yeah, it was under 350 bucks round trip. Maybe we found the same flight.
They might've been. They had never thought of going to Zagreb, but they were like, for that price, you know, look, we'd fly that same amount to fly down to Florida or to go over to Texas.
Let's go to Croatia. Let's be serendipitous.
And they ended up having the trip of a lifetime. So I think leaving yourself open to serendipity is a great way, not only to be able to get cheap flights, but to take much more interesting, unexpected vacations than you might otherwise.
Yeah, I agree. It was totally interesting and totally not a place I would have gone to otherwise.
So I do want to ask you about budget airlines. What is your take? Do these things actually save you money? I'm talking about Spirit, Frontier, or do all the hidden fees cancel out the savings? So it depends.
Obviously, if you're only traveling with a backpack, it's definitely going to save you money. Because I've looked at flights from my home airport in Portland down to Las Vegas, and the Spirit flight costs $25 each way.
The next closest Alaska flight costs $130. So an extra over $100.
But you mentioned once you start taking into account some of the fees. Some of those bag fees.
It can easily get more expensive for the budget airline. So obviously, you want to be very cognizant of the fees.
I'm not telling folks anything that they don't know. But the thing that I think they might overlook, and I'm going to give you one good reason to fly a budget airline and one reason to avoid them.
Okay, hit me. So the good reason for budget airlines is especially to leisure destinations like Vegas and Orlando, they actually have the most nonstop flights.
So for many folks, if you're flying from Minneapolis, you're flying from, I don't know, Des Moines, Iowa or San Antonio or something like that, you actually might be able to get a nonstop flight to Las Vegas or Orlando on a budget airline. But if you were flying a full service airline, you might have to connect in Dallas or Chicago or something like that.
So it'd be a quicker flight in many instances on the budget airline. The reason to avoid them that most folks don't necessarily think about is that budget airlines have far fewer flights on the schedule.
And so if you've got a flight to Vegas on Spirit and that flight gets canceled, it might be a while until there's the next available Spirit flight to your destination. They don't have partnerships.
They don't have what are called interline agreements with other airlines to put you on a different carrier. So you could actually be waiting days to get a replacement flight.
That's something that usually doesn't happen if you're on Delta or United. It's so funny that you say Vegas.
I had a friend flying on Frontier to Vegas and her flight got canceled and they said, oh, no worries. We'll put you on the next flight two days later.
Exactly. The downside risk with budget airlines can be a lot worse than the downside risk with full service airlines.
Yeah. But if you can avoid that layover, I always try to avoid layovers if possible.
And as you mentioned, sometimes with budget airlines to those big destinations, it is better. Absolutely.
Look, I'll gladly fly Spirit to Las Vegas if it means nonstop versus a connecting flight on a full-service airline. And I'm a no-bag person anyway, so I don't worry about the bag fees.
Okay, so we want to dig a little more into airfare pricing because it feels like there is a science behind it. And for the nerds like us who understand the science, finding great airfare deals is possible.
We will get that in a moment. Stay with us.
So Scott, you look at airfare prices every day and it seems like airfare pricing is really unpredictable. How do you find these best deals when prices are always changing? So the funny thing about searching for good airfare for those really cheap flights is that you don't really have much advance warning.
There's not, you know, a weather report, a 10-day advance notice of what airfare is to come. You just kind of got to be there watching all the time and make sure when those deals do pop up that you find them as quickly as possible and let members know because there's a rule in airfare.
The better the deal, the shorter it tends to last. And so, you know, I often hear, oh, Scott, well, why do we even need going? You know, I can search on Google flights.
I can find these deals myself. And I say, absolutely.
Look, if you, we spend 16, 18 hours a day searching for airfare to make sure that we never miss those great deals, you can certainly do that. Not everybody I've come to find is similar in that love for airfare hunting.
And so that's the service we try to provide for folks. So I know there is something about a 24-hour cancellation rule.
Can you talk about that and how listeners can maximize that? I will talk about it in a moment, but can I lead in with my biggest cheap flight regret of my life? Oh my gosh, tell us. So excited.
And rather than taking my own advice of just booking it right away and then figure out the details later, I decided, why don't I figure out an itinerary? I've never been to India before. Let me figure out when I want to go.
What's a good amount of time to spend there? Let me find a bunch of friends who'd want to go. So I spent the next couple hours scouting all that out.
And then when I went to actually book the flight, I missed it by 30 seconds. Right.
It had just disappeared. And so the advice that you're supposed to do that I didn't take myself, but now would never make this mistake again, is knowing about the 24-hour rule.
There is a federal regulation that says from the moment you hit purchase on airfare, you have a 24-hour window during which you can cancel that purchase and get your cash back. No questions asked, no requirements, just period.
You get your money back. And what that does is essentially a free price freeze.
You hit purchase on that flight. You've got it locked in for 24 hours during which you can decide, do I want to keep this flight or do I want to cancel? And so what I should have done with that India flight was book maybe one flight in, let's say, for two weeks in April, book one flight for two weeks in May, book one flight for two weeks in June.
You're a maniac. Yeah, totally.
But then spend the next 24 hours deciding which one of those I want to keep and then just go ahead and cancel the other two. Assuming I don't want to take three India flights in three months.
That's a long trip to do three times. Totally.
But when there's a mistake fare, something that feels like once in a lifetime, that's what you want to make sure you get it locked in and ideally give yourself some options and then figure out after the fact which one to keep and which one to give back. You just got to remember to cancel within 24 hours.
Totally, yes. 25 hours is no good.
Very important. Do you think mistake fares are still alive and well? What is the status of them these days? They are.
We've found three of them here going so far in 2025. $87 Brazil deal.
There are flights over to Madrid for $603 round trip in premium economy that usually costs well over $1,500, closer to $2,000. So they do still pop up.
My favorite one from last year was flights to Dublin for $114 round trip. Amazing.
But the bad news is mistake fares don't pop up quite as often as they did when I first started my professional cheap flight finding career. So back then, this all started when I got a mistake fair myself, nonstop from New York City to Milan for $130 round trip.
And I remember back then, it felt like every week or two, there was a different mistake fare. And so airlines have gotten better at catching them, but they're not perfect.
And once every couple of months or so, we find one of these mistake fares. The rest of the deals we find are still very, very good, but they're not quite the 90%, 95% off deals that you might find with the mistake fare.
So far, we've been talking a lot about cash mistake fares or just cash deals in general. I know going recently launched Going With Points.
Talk about how people can find great deals using their points. Yeah, the thing that I love about points is that they're a great complement to cash deals.
We talked about the Goldilocks windows, when cheap flights are most likely to pop up. And it's basically right in the middle.
The great thing about points is it's the opposite. You're going to find the best deals, especially if you're trying to fly in the front of the plane, premium economy, business class, first class.
Those deals are most likely to pop up right at the beginning of the schedule, about 11 months before travel, and right at the end in the last few weeks or last month before travel. And so that's why having the stash of points can be really, really helpful in any deal that you're hoping to get.
Because if you're in that mushy middle, maybe paying with cash is where you're most likely to see a good deal. But let's say you found out, oh my gosh, I've got next weekend off.
Where can I go? Well, the cash fares might be pretty expensive, but paying with points, you might actually be able to get a pretty good deal. So they complement each other really nicely.
And do you see any mistake points deals? Absolutely. You know, we found one.
It was in 2024 over to Finland in business class for 19,000 points round trip. That's the equivalent of about $190 for the standard one cent per point cash out.
And so that flight would normally, if you're paying with cash, cost $3,000, $3,500. To get it for the points equivalent of $190, that would have been the deal of a lifetime for me.
I've got a couple of young kids. I couldn't jump on it myself.
I would have loved to. But if you don't have the Finair points or the Amex points to transfer, you can't take advantage of that mistake fare on points.
Yeah. And sometimes that can be tricky because even especially with a lot of airlines, it takes a long time to transfer points.
So as soon as you see that deal, then the deal is already gone by the time you've made the transfer. It can be tricky.
100%. You know, you've heard the advice in the financial world of diversifying your portfolio.
It's the exact same thing with points and miles, having a diversified pool of points and miles, and especially those transferable bank points. That's essentially built-in diversity.
Think of it as the index funds of the points world, where those Amex points and Chase points can transfer to a bunch of different airlines. Hopefully, you'll be able to do it quickly.
You can do a quick Google search and see if it's an instant transfer or if it takes some time to be able to jump on it next time there's a mistake there. Are there any points programs that you lean towards because they are the best quote index fund? Oh, goodness.
I mean, look, I always like focusing mostly on the bank points because that transferability, the fact that you can take an Amex point and transfer it to dozens of different airlines you can transfer to. And what the benefit is there is there might be a good, you know, the number of points it costs on Delta might be 100,000 points for this flight to Paris, but on Air France, Flying Blue miles, it might only be 30,000.
And so if you've got a bunch of Delta miles, you're out of luck. You can't really take advantage of it.
But if you have a bunch of Amex points, you just transfer them over to Flying Blue to Air France, and then you can do it just 30,000 points rather than the 100,000 it might have cost on Delta. So last question on nerding out over low airfare prices.
I see a lot of the nerds out there swear by using VPNs, incognito mode to book their flights. Is this actually a useful trick? What have you found about using this? Short answer, no.
Okay. I've come to terms with the fact that I am going to be arguing this until I die.
It will be on my tombstone. Scott, he didn't believe that airfare was impacted by cookies.
But this is true. We searched for air for tens, hundreds, thousands, millions of airfare every single day.
If somebody was going to see prices impacted by repeated searches, it would be us. And we don't.
And the fact is that airfare is the most volatile thing that we purchase. That is true.
It's not egg prices? They're just high and stay high. Okay, true.
Apparently, sometimes roller coasters. But the mistake that people make is this sort of Truman Show belief that the airlines are watching you.
And when you search for something, they want to jack up the price to get more money from you. But the weird thing is it actually has the logic backwards.
In most forms of e-commerce, when you're on, I don't know, Levi's.com and you're searching for some jeans and you click on one, but then you don't actually buy it, Levi's, they're not going to jack up the price next time you look for it. What they're going to do is they're going to hit you with a discount code.
They're going to email you a coupon and say, hey, we saw you were interested. Would you like a 10% off promo code? And that's the way that companies tend to approach it.
They actually discount ones that you've looked at, not jack up the price. So the good news, it doesn't make a difference.
If you don't believe me, if you're really steadfast in your belief, go ahead and search in incognito, clear your cookies. It's not going to make a difference either way.
Yeah, that's a good point. I mean, especially for you.
You search so many cheap flights, you would think that you would be presented the highest prices. Totally.
I mean, on video once. I searched for the same flight 100 times in a row.
It was a long video. And on flight search 100, just like flight search number one, the exact same.
It was Denver to London for $442 round trip. Didn't change a penny.
Okay, cool. Okay, so I want to ask you some personal questions.
Yes. First off, I know that going formally Scott's Cheap Flight started when you found a $130 flight between New York and Milan, which is amazing.
But I want to know, what is the best flight deal you've ever booked if it wasn't that one? Oh, goodness. Probably that one.
Certainly the most memorable for me, but I also had one once over to Japan for $169 round trip. Wow.
Amazing. That one was unreal.
The only reason I don't think of that one rather than $130 Milan flight is the $130 Milan flight ended up causing this sort of butterfly effect that resulted in me being here today as a professional cheap flight finder, whereas the Japan one was just a fun vacation over to Japan. And was that from Portland? So that one was actually kind of odd.
The logistics of it was from San Jose, but it was actually over to Taiwan. And so the way I did it was you had to fly from Taiwan over to San Jose and then back.
And so you ended up having to do what's called hidden city ticketing, where you didn't take the last leg of the flight. It was a little bit complicated too, but suffice to say for $169, I'm willing to take a little bit extra hassle in order to make that trip happen.
And also I want to know about risk. Do you think not taking the last leg puts you on a sketchy list anywhere? I think if you do it sparingly, you're fine.
I've heard of almost nobody getting in trouble that way. Amazing.
You guys heard it from Scott. There you go.
We've talked a lot about cheap flights, but I do want to know what's your biggest travel splurge? Oh, goodness. So my best advice on splurging for travel is not necessarily one specific thing, but it's the timing of your splurge.
I always like to splurge on the very last day of a trip, something really expensive, something indulgent, a big tour, safari, great restaurant meal, whatever it is. And here's why.
When scientists and researchers have looked about how people tend to enjoy their vacations, they've found something called the peak end rule, which means that your vacation ends up boiling down in your memories to how much you enjoyed it at the peak of your experience and how much you enjoyed it at the end of your experience. And so having a great activity or whatever it is planned for that last day really helps shape your memories of that trip and makes it a much more, gives you almost your future self a lot more joy about the trip in those memories.
So whatever it is that you might be doing, you know, skiing in the Alps or whatever, I always like to make sure I'm targeting it for that last day of the trip because it's going to end up giving you more joy basically for the rest of your life. I like that.
Okay, well, my last question for you, if you personally could make one change to the airline industry, what would it be? I think the thing that I would love to see is the ability to resell your ticket after you purchase it. Wait, that's a great one.
Yeah, we all kind of forget that this is very standard practice when it comes to other tickets, right? Yeah, Taylor Swift concert, all about that. You buy tickets to your local NBA team, your local NFL team, whatever it is, and you decide you don't want to go, you can resell them.
There are tons of reselling things. But with flights, with airfare, for some reason, we can't do that.
I would love for that to be the case because it gives people a lot more flexibility to be able to change their plans after they book. Why can't we do that right now? That's such a good point.
The short answer is that the airline's pricing model is predicated on you not being able to resell. What they say is, well, we would have to charge more if we didn't know that people would be taking those flights.
But the thing is, they also said this about change fees in general. They said, look, if you're able to change your plans without paying a hefty fee, then we're going to have to charge more.
And then COVID happened in late 2020, airlines across the board got rid of change fees and no longer cost money to be able to change your plans. If you cancel, you get full amount of travel credit for a future flight.
And airfare has been fine. It's basically about even with where it was pre-pandemic.
If you adjust for overall inflation, it's way cheaper than it was in February 2020. So I don't know.
I think airlines could deal fine with people reselling their tickets. Yeah.
I'm very fascinated by this idea. Totally.
Airlines are a little afraid of change. You know, it's something of a, you know, little C conservative industry.
And so you don't see huge changes in airline technology or the traveler experience or this and that. So I'm not holding my breath that this is going to happen anytime soon.
No, no. But make me king of the airline industry for a day.
That's the first thing I'm doing. Thank you so much for taking the time to chat with us today.
I hope you have an amazing time in Japan. It's been fun talking to you.
Thank you so much. It was great chatting with you, Sally.
Sally, that was awesome. Lots of great advice in there that you wouldn't necessarily expect.
You know, I was so shocked when he said that he does skip lagging because I know it's so frowned upon. And he was like, it's okay if you do it.
Do it in moderation. I love that.
Everything in moderation. Okay.
So Megan, I want to know from you, we heard from Scott, but what are your hot takes related to airfare? Mine is don't sleep on stopovers. I think when we think about airfare, we often think about it as just a round trip to one destination and we want to get the lowest price for that.
But if you have time, you should think about booking a multi-city itinerary because sometimes it won't cost any extra and it's like you got two destinations for the price of one. Yeah, this is basically the hyperdrive version of my long layovers hack.
So a stopover is basically when you stop in a city en route to your destination and instead of just doing a layover at the airport, you spend at least a night, sometimes multiple nights in that city. I love this hack, Megan, because you're getting two trips for the price of one flight.
And some airlines or countries actually help you do this. Like I'm thinking Icelandair, which lets you stay in Iceland for up to seven days before you continue your journey and fly somewhere else, usually in Europe.
Turkish Airlines has another great option where they'll even put you up in a hotel for free for two or three nights, depending on if you flew economy or business class when you stay in Istanbul. We should mention that some airline loyalty programs allow free stopovers for points bookings too.
I'm thinking of United Airlines. They have something called the Excursionist Park.
This gives you a free one-way award within select multi-city trips between at least two award regions. So let's translate that for people.
Let's say you want to go to both London and Paris on your European vacation. So you might fly from Chicago to London.
And then from London, you'd fly to Paris and then Paris back to Chicago. So with the excursionist perk, the first leg, the one to London, and the last leg, the one from Paris to Chicago, those would be award

redemption. So you would spend as many miles as those flights cost.
But the middle segment in

between Paris and London actually won't cost any miles. It's zero miles.
It's free.

Amazing. So this example is Europe, but this also works for flights within other regions like

Southeast Asia, South America, all without using extra miles.

Yeah, we've got some info on the excursionist perk on the NerdWallet website that we will link to in the show notes. Hope you all can take advantage and add another country or destination to an upcoming trip.
Yes, indeed. So we do want to hear from you all.
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