World Travel Is Dirt Cheap … If You Don’t Have Any Baggage

ASTORIA, NYC- Searching for flights has never been a very sexy affair. But today it’s kind of like trying to make a genuine friend in a Fez bazaar. In other words, a mine field of confidence tricks, scams, and entities who will try just about anything to separate you from your money.

It’s always a fun game to look at flight prices as they are listed on flight aggregator sites like Skyscanner and then look at what you actually end up paying. By fun, I mean effing sucks.

All too often, the flight prices that you’re shown are little more than feeder rates. The airline doesn’t actually expect you to buy these tickets for the price shown, the low rates merely serve the function of getting you in through the door and onto the booking page …

… where the actual price of the flight begins to reveal itself.

Once there, you will almost inevitably find multiple higher priced booking tiers for you to choose from with threats that if you actually purchase the cheap ticket that you came to buy you will suffer the consequences:

Not being able to travel with any luggage.

Not being able to select your seat.

Having to board the flight last.

Potentially losing the money you spent on the ticket if you don’t buy insurance.

And sometimes not even being permitted to check in at the airport in person.

If you actually want to be treated like anything more than a hunk of biological freight, you have to either upgrade to a more costly pricing tier or add on another $35-$65 per leg fee for a carry on bag, a $60-$80 per leg fee for checked bags, a fee to choose your seat, a fee for travel insurance, another fee for cancelation insurance, and sometimes even a $30 or so dollar customer service fee in case something goes wrong and you need to call the booking agent.

In point, no airline expects anyone to be so brash as to buy a ticket for the price they advertise on aggregator sites. And if anyone does, the airline has gate agents who will try to snipe them as they board and slap on a massive gate check fee if any part of their personal bag peaks outside of the metal rack.

The takeaway here is that airlines no longer make money from selling flights. They make money from selling credit cards, insurance, baggage, seat selections, and customer service. The next time you buy a flight, look at the receipt as to how the expenses break down: the actual ticket fare probably won’t even come close to half of the total price.

When I first began traveling the peak of backpacker cool was to travel long-term with just a carry-on.

Today, the biggest travel hack is to be able to travel with nothing.

And that’s basically what I’m doing on my trip to Panama in a week.

I’m calling the airlines on their bluff and showing up with just a small sling bag.

I’m not sure if this is going to work out. The bag fully complies with the airline’s regulations, so I’m not concerned about that, but I am wondering if I’m going to be able to carry all the stuff that I need. But I did a dry run:

iPad, iPhone, a pair of shorts, three t-shirts, two pairs of socks, two pairs of underwear, a toothbrush, toothpaste, charger cables … and it all fit, so I said fuck it and bought just a flight with nothing extra added.

If this works out then I know I can travel all around for relatively cheap. I’m saving $150 on just this trip alone. Added up over a course of a year, that’s a savings that could be measured in four figures.

But this really makes me think of the old days of air travel … where the price that you were shown was the price that you paid … where you could travel comfortably with a personal item, a carry on, and a checked bag all for free… where …

The thing about the good ol’ days is that you can never recognize them while they’re happening.