The Airplane Tickets

We are preparing for our REAL honeymoon or honeymoon part 2.  Yay!  Soon after we got engaged when thinking about honeymoon destinations London quickly came to mind.  But we didn't want to travel there at the time of year we got married.  Plus we wanted to be able to spend more time than what we could have after taking time off for the actual wedding events.  It is now time to take our true honeymoon.  Orlando was great but it was not meant in my mind as the real deal this will be the real deal.

I followed all the tips for purchasing plane tickets.  I have a friend that used to work for a major airline and she has quite a few tips for buying plane tickets.  I always follow her tips.  However, we were a little undecided with all the destinations we were going to in Europe.  So we purchased one-way tickets to London through American Airlines. Thinking we could continue looking around for decently priced one-way tickets back to Dallas from wherever else we decided to go.  London was the sure bet, we've always had London in our plan.  Plus going into London from Dallas means there's quite a few direct flights.  Trying to go deeper into Europe from Dallas means there's some stops along the way.

I spent some time one afternoon a couple Sundays ago looking for a return flight.  I searched all different airlines.  There were plenty of flights, problem was they were ridiculously priced.  I quickly realized though the higher prices were the American owned airlines.  Light bulb moment....that's when I started looking at foreign airlines.  I tried Air France, KLM, and British Airways.  While on the British Airways web site, simply for the purpose of cost comparison I did a search for roundtrip tickets from London to Dallas.  What popped up?  The flight out of Dallas we were already booked on through American Airlines.  I had to do a double take as I stared at my computer screen.  British Airways obviously works in conjunction with American Airlines and was selling tickets for American Airlines flights as well.  Guess how much British Airways was selling the tickets for?  Half price!  Yes, you read that correctly...half price.  I couldn't believe my eyes.  I thought I had made a mistake.  No way could it be that cheap to go from Dallas to London on an American Airlines flight by way of buying the ticket through British Airways. 

I instantly recalled seeing in small print on our American Airlines tickets that international flights are refundable.  Domestic flights are usually not refundable unless you pay extra but international flights are refundable.  So guess what I did?  The next day after discovering the same flight was being sold for half price by British Airways I called and cancelled our flight through American Airlines then booked our roundtrip flight through British Airways.  Because of the discount we bought two tickets for London and coming home from London for the same amount we spent on only one ticket going through American Airlines.

As Brad said...it's like the car buying experience all over again.  American brands have jacked up their prices.  I highly encourage people to look around and look around some more when buying airline tickets.  The cheapest way for us ended up being the roundtrip tickets from London to Dallas, it means we'll visit Paris during our time in Europe then return to London by train before coming home.  That's a non-issue to us since we got such a significant savings from buying the roundtrip tickets from British Airways. The flight to London is on American Airlines and our return flight home is on British Airways.  Still can't believe the savings!  I'd love to give our money to American owned airlines but I'm not willing to give them thousands extra.  We literally saved more than $2000.