Tips to Keep in Mind when Booking Airline Tickets

Planning a family vacation? What’s the first thing you think? Is it – “Let’s book the airline tickets quickly before the prices rise!” 

Sound familiar?

With the world at your fingertips, it is extremely easy to do that with the click of a button. But, in your hurry, you may sometimes miss out on some key points. 

Here is a list of 5 things that you must check carefully before booking airline tickets for international destinations:

1 - Check the Baggage Allowance

Surprised that this is my first point? Well, there is a reason for that. We generally look at the cheapest options while looking for flights, and get super excited when we find one that seems too good to be true. One of the reasons why the cost could be low is that they may have provided zero baggage allowance. 

*The baggage allowance is the amount of checked baggage or hand/carry-on luggage an airline will allow per passenger. This differs from airline to airline.

Some low-cost airlines do not add the cost of baggage to the fares. What then happens is that unless you are planning on taking only a backpack, you end up paying through your nose at the check-in counter! Hence, the suggestion that you check the baggage allowance first. 

Pro-Tip: If you have a connecting flight do check the baggage allowance for the 2nd sector too, cause in case those are domestic flights, the baggage allowance is reduced. 

Let me give an example -

You live in India and are planning a trip to explore Italy. You plan on arriving in Rome and spending 3-4 days there before flying to Florence. This is now a domestic flight where the baggage allowance will be less than what you had on your international flight while flying from India to Rome. This is something you will need to check and factor-in before booking your tickets.

2 - Check the Duration of the Layover

This is a very important point to check while booking a trip that requires connecting flights. If the duration of the layover is too less, you risk the chance of missing your connecting flight. 

Let me share something that happened with me. While flying back from Barcelona, we had a one-and-a-half-hour layover at Paris. Our flight got delayed, and by the time we reached Paris we had only 40 minutes before our flight to Mumbai was scheduled to depart and that too from a different terminal! And let me tell you, running through a crowded airport looks fun only in movies. Definitely not recommended!

Pro-Tip: To be on the safe side any layover should be at least 2 to 3 hours long. 

3 - Always get a Refundable or Partially-Refundable Ticket

Airline tickets are pretty expensive these days. Though fully or partially refundable tickets are slightly costlier, I would still suggest going for them. This is because we tend to book tickets quite in advance to get better rates, and one cannot predict what circumstances may arise at the time of travel. If the ticket is non-refundable, and you need to cancel or change your plans at the last minute, you will end up losing a huge amount of money.

4 - Check the Meal Options

Many low-cost airlines do not add a meal option with the basic fare. You feel you have saved a bunch of money, but then when you have to fly 5 hours without any food you will definitely regret not checking this point. And the paid food options on most flights are quite pitiable. 

Pro-Tip: If you don’t want to go for the meal option, I would suggest that you carry protein bars or pick-up some ready-to-go food at the airport.

5 - Check the ‘Duration of Stay’ on your Visa

This is a very important point. Before booking your airline tickets check your visa carefully. Most often we check only the validity of the visa, to see that it is valid from this date to that. But along with that, look carefully at the top right-hand corner. You will see something called ‘Duration of Stay’ (not for all countries). This is something extremely important and can get you in trouble with immigration if you miss it. 

Let me give an example to illustrate this point better. Our visa for Turkey was valid for a whole year. Yippee! But hold your horses. Duration of stay was only 30 days. What did that mean? It meant that we could visit Turkey any time during the whole year, and as many times as we wanted, but we could only stay for 30 days at a time. 

Now, if we had missed checking that and booked our return flight after 45 days, we would have definitely been stopped at immigration when we tried to fly back. Scary!

Bonus Tip

Nowadays, most airlines have paid seats. While booking if you don’t opt for this, the seats get auto-allocated. And if you are a group of friends travelling or even a family, this could mean that you may end up getting separate seats, away from each other. And that is not fun! It is better to opt for paid seats especially for long-haul flights. 

Unless of course you are looking for some peace and quiet away from your squabbling teenagers!

Happy Travelling