The Flight Deal

I'm all messed up from a web site called The Flight Deal. I've always waited for something like this; their staff of crazed maniacs rake through air fares, finding unadvertised specials and erroneous fares. If you jump on them quickly, you can go far for pennies.

I've booked Laguardia to Dallas for $80. Round-trip. Including fees and tax. That was before I lost my mind and booked a trip to Bogota, a city I have no interest in visiting, for $240 (again, round-trip, including fees/tax; plus, on this one, I get $100 off the fare from a credit card bonus offer, lowering my total to a demented $140).

Who wouldn't go to Bogota and back for $140 in the dead of icy January? The dollar is super-strong there. An airport cab into town costs about 25¢. Dinners run like $5. You can find great hotels well under $50/night. And the flight down lets me overnight in Miami (chicken!). So I'm off for Bogota!

To use the site, hit the "Flight Deals" menu, select your home city, bookmark the following page, and check it daily (fares change quickly).

The Flight Deal also offers a slew of savvy service articles on topics like "How To Avoid International Data Roaming Charges" (buy a MiFi; I never heard of MiFis before this, but they seem awesome; see my comment beneath that article for updated research), "What is a Stopover and How to Take Advantage", and "No Foreign Exchange Fee Credit Cards That Can Save You A Lot of Money!". They're titled to sound like linkbait, but they're great.

Everything on the site is smart. There's human intelligence at work, not just some soulless algorithm, and if you're the least bit impulsive (and, like me, can work from anywhere), you'll want to avoid it like the plague. Lest you wind up in Bogota.

One tip: they instruct you to use heavy-duty software to find flights. It's not necessary. You can find most of them via Kayak or Google Flights. Once you do, book tickets via The Flight Deal's affiliate links (to ensure they get support). In fact, use those links for all bookings any time; this is a great service we need to see prosper.


This popped up five minutes after I wrote the above: $196 NYC to Palm Springs, CA and back on Jet Blue. Including fees/tax.