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[veritas1]

Over the past 2 years, I have circled the globe twice, lived in Europe and Asia. I travel between the US and Europe at least twice a year (to make the parental units happy) and i have never paid more than 1000 for a round trip flight taxes included. With the right combination of timing and technique, you too can be a frugal traveller. Here are a few examples of what I have done to keep my journey under 1000.
1. Sometime if you are trying to book a flight with a necessary layover, all in one price, the cost can be higher. So, here is what I did. For example, I wanted to book a flight from San Antonio, TX to Amsterdam, The Netherlands but I have to stop over in Houston, TX before the direct flight to Amsterdam. When booking it all together the cost was somewhere around $1180. So I decided to book a flight to Houston from San Antonio, as they were having discounted flights within Texas on the same airline. THEN, I booked a flight a few hours later directly to Amsterdam. The grand total for my ticket then? ....$720! Be careful to book the    first flight into the SAME airport you plan on flying out of and give yourself a few hours to make the next leg of your journey. Trust me, it will pay off in the end and besides a few hours in the airport these days is barely enough time to go through security so the wait time will fly by and you have a bit extra money to play with.

2. Another option is to look into nearby airports for better travel deals, I have even gone so far as to calculate the cost of gas getting to the nearby airport into my overall cost. For example, when I took my first trip to Bangkok in 2009 I decided to fly out of Austin, TX on southwest airlines on my first leg to Los Angeles (about an hour and a half away from where I live). If you plan the timing right you can get that first leg of your journey over quicker and so much cheaper then booking multiple legs with a single carrier. I flew to asia on Thai Airways and the all inclusive flight would have cost me somewhere around $1800...one way! BUT, by driving to Austin and having lunch with a friend before my first leg and spending about 4 hours in LAX, my ticket came out to be $1000 AND I flew premium economy (think unlimited booze and shrimp for your in-flight meal)
3. Also, Chase and Continental airlines have teamed up to offer 30,000 miles if you sign up for a credit card OR a checking account with $25 in it. A few weeks later you should get 30,000 onepass miles in your miles account. its about 50,000 miles for a international roundtrip, 25,000 miles for roundtrip domestic flight….so you do the math. I once used my miles to fly roundtrip from Europe back to Texas and with the 50.00 booking fee and taxes it cost me a 60 bucks AND they overbooked and I got ungraded to Business class. Talk about an amazing deal!

I have created a blog detailing some other money saving tips along with links to companies I have booked through in the past.

frugalescapes.blogspot.com/

[derrick241]

I suppose that works for you in America, dont work like that in the UK

Nothing in the UK is cheap, certainly not any kind of travel, by any means and air travel is about as expensive as you can get