Shameless Bargaining

Here’s quite a travel hack I came across today.Have you tried something like this?Were you successful?What was your experience like?

How to travel by Air by paying the price of a Train:

Often our travel plans are decided at the last moment and we rarely have time to book tickets 2 months in advance as IRCTC wants us to do. Getting a confirmed ticket in Tatkal is also pretty unsure in all the busy routes during anytime of the year,forget about festival periods. Generally a Tatkal booking looks like this and since the counter will open at 8AM it is an overnight standing in queues.

 

The only option is taking a flight which is very expensive at the last moment and we are easily charged 4-5 times the fare of 2 Tier AC.

So here is the trick which one of my cousins is doing for quite some time since he needs to travel all over the country for business purpose at last minute notice.

Leave your home the same time as you would have left for a train journey and make your way to the Airport. Your journey destination must be between two busy Air traffic cities like Kol-Bnglr or Delhi-Chennai or Mum-Kol and the cities must take at least 24 hours or more to commute between them since you need to have 8-10 hours of time in hand at the Airport.

Now when you reach the Airport go to the ticket counters of each and every airline and try to negotiate the price.

Start with 20-30% of the price but don’t go above 50%. As usual Airlines will not accept your offer initially but you are also happy to leave them since you have ample time in hand. Your probability increases with the no. of flights operating in the route and whether it is a normal weekday or not.

Most of the Airlines go through 50-60% occupancies in these routes throughout the day. Just negotiate shamelessly with each and every operator in these routes for their every plane. Chances are within 6-7 hours you will be able to fly in any of the airlines at 40% of the ticket rate.

Since it is better to get 40% of a ticket than getting nothing at all for these operators.If you are travelling in more numbers you can discount it more.

My cousin has even travelled at 10% of the ticket rate on midnight flights.
This may be a surprise to most of us but there is a small group of business travelers who fly regularly and use the airlines as a bus service, it is very common for them. Airlines are also cool about it as long as it brings them revenues.

At the end it’s just a simple case of Demand and Supply.

P.S-As my cousin and me had only traveled in India, we do not know if it works in other parts of the world. Would be happy to know something like this elsewhere.

Happy Flying 🙂

Now I’m wondering if this thing works if we send some one else to do the bargaining so that this time can be used better?Or better still are there agents for this thing too,just like for the tatkal tickets?Does anybody have the phone number of such an agent?