<p>We try to always use Southwest. I learned the hard way that it is smarter to get Southwest for the most likely itinerary ASAP, then get the DING specials and you can rebook if a deal comes up, but for Tgiving and Christmas holidays, if you wait for DD/DS to let you know their preferred dates, you may be stuck with higher prices and we used the guessing date ticket most of the time anyway!</p>
<p>Just last week there was a story on the news about getting discounts on airline tickets and promotional codes. here is the link</p>
<p>[You</a> might be surprised to learn the deals airlines are offering these days | 7online.com](<a href=“http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/story?section=news/consumer&id=7438796]You”>http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/story?section=news/consumer&id=7438796)</p>
<p>the 2 sites they say to check out are </p>
<p>[Airfare</a> Deals - Cheap Flights - Airfarewatchdog](<a href=“http://www.airfarewatchdog.com%5DAirfare”>http://www.airfarewatchdog.com) </p>
<p>[FareCompare</a> - Cheap Flights, Travel Deals, Cheap Tickets, Airline Tickets and Discount Airfares](<a href=“http://www.farecompare.com%5DFareCompare”>http://www.farecompare.com)</p>
<p>Some of the other parents have suggested using </p>
<p>Kayak.com</p>
<p>cheapoair.com</p>
<p>hope this helps</p>
<p>Determine which airlines will serve the destination city from your area, and monitor their pricing policies for awhile. In my case I find that I get the best deals about 3-6 weeks out. Earlier or later than that window the prices are higher. You can use web sites like kayak.com to monitor the prices - or use the airline’s own web sites (some are easier to navigate than others).</p>
<p>Use two different airlines if you are going to use pizzagirl’s trick. If you use one airline, you can get caught violating the terms of travel and get charged full fare. This approach is referred to as a back to back or a nested ticketing arrangement and is against the tariff of most airlines. </p>
<p>Yes, the airlines do check for this, I worked on a project writing the software to find such ticketing arrangement at one major US airline - and they were not the first to implement such a program.</p>
<p>Find an airline and be loyal. Sign up for frequent flyer miles. Your kiddo may end up with enough miles for a free trip at some point.</p>
<p>A couple of things (living in Atlanta):</p>
<p>Anywhere Airtran flies, Delta matches and doesn’t penalize one way tickets.</p>
<p>Sign up for the email notifications from both airlines.</p>
<p>With Airtran there seems to be a new sale every two to three weeks, which means Delta has a sale as well.</p>
<ol>
<li>For the first trip orientation, do parents (both?) ususally go with the student? His college said that the parent has to say good bye the first day. After first day, if I stay in a nearby hotel, can I still stay a few days to him dorm necessities, etc? I don’t know if they allow us to take the student out during orientation.</li>
</ol>
<p>Most of the time they allow students to move in a day early and pay for that night. This is common for international students or students with a special program (living learning center, activity or interest group, etc). It comes in handy for students coming from long distances - you can fly in and move in the things you carry then assess the room and go shopping for what is needed. It gives you a bit of extra time before the time the parent needs to leave. The student can even stay with you in the hotel if they are not comfortable in an empty or semi-empty dorm.</p>
<p>I would never recommend trying to fly a Boston student home for Thanksgiving. The flights are crazed, the time is too tight and you can’t count on the weather. My student always had important class work right after Thanksgiving with the semester ending around Dec. 15th.<br>
You may find that once your student has settled in and made friends they don’t always opt to fly home for weekends/Thanksgiving/Easter…
I would buy a ticket to get him there in September and worry about the rest later.
YMMV</p>
<p>I would book Thanksgiving flights if the time off exceeds a four day weekend. I would not book Fall Break flights unless you nail a sweet deal. </p>
<p>re Parent weekend…I would probably do that freshman year but skip homecoming weekend…many freshmen have parents on Parent weekend and they like to introduce you to other friends parents…but not everyone has parents who can take this luxury time out and arrive…it is not that big of a deal …if you aren’t there…likely it is not a big deal and he/she might get invited out with friend and other parents. </p>
<p>These two occasions (homecoming/parents weekend) are too close together and Fall Break is another thing that makes for too many trips home counting Thanksgiving and Winter Break. Fall Break can mean going home to visit a friend’s family closer to campus, taking a small road trip with friend or hanging out with other friends who are not flying home for good reasons. </p>
<p>Spring Break on many campuses is not reserved for parents so you may wish to visit campus spring break instead of fall season. My sons usually flew off to volunteer with Alternative Spring Break or to do pleasure trips with friends or friend’s families.</p>
<p>…so it is usually smarter to visit “briefly”…they do have full lives…on different weekends that make more sense re spacing. </p>
<p>In our market, I can’t put my son on the last flights into our dinky airport…because any cancellation and he can’t get here at all. Thankfully, since he flew home on the day of the 13 inch rain in Nashville this year, I had the good sense to book him on an early flight and he got repeatedly bumped up into the last flight of the night at midnight but he made it.</p>
<p>He is often one of the last to leave campus because we can’t know if he took his exams on which day…and each college has “make up days” for kids with legit reasons to not take exams on normal dates…you never know if your kid got sick and thus is taking a final on a end date of the dorms being open. </p>
<p>So…generally you can book flights the day before dorms close. Dates you must be out of the dorms are posted months in advance. Lots of kids pack up and leave at breakfast on those dates. Taxis piled up outside my kids’ dorms.</p>
<p>In time of stress…airports closing due to blizzards a la last year…dorms are left open longer to accomodate kids whose flights are massively cancelled…no worries. Deans of Residential Housing are there for these problems.</p>
<p>We love Southwest for our dd’s trips across the country because you can always cancel a ticket and re-book a different one if necessary. You will get a credit for the first ticket, so there is no penalty. Then you can use the credit the next time. It also doesn’t matter if you’re booking a one way or a round trip ticket price-wise.</p>
<p>Plus, we each could check 2 bags for free so we could move her into her dorm room without shipping stuff. I like not having to use miles to book flights which are more expensive. With Southwest after 8 one-ways, she gets a free flight.</p>
<p>She flew home for Thanksgiving because her school had the whole week off. What a relief to not have that Wed. night airport chaos!</p>
<p>S1 is 2500 miles away cross-country and the trip through three time zones takes an entire day. He has a frequent flyer account at every airline (tho some have now consolidated!) and I book whatever flight is cheapest. We’ve used Student Universe, Priceline, just about every internet site, individual airlines…I sometimes feel as if my third career is as a travel agent. Best success with identifying lowest cost seems to be kayak with a check of the actual airline site. For scheduling difficulties, I always check [ITA</a> Software](<a href=“http://itasoftware.com/]ITA”>http://itasoftware.com/) and then try to book thru the airline’s site.</p>
<p>S1 flies home every Thanksgiving; sometimes Tues-Sun, last year Wed-Sat. It’s just a requirement in our extended family and he wouldn’t miss it. Also at the holidays, but never at spring break. I have always been able to view the academic calendar online and just schedule flights for the last day of finals. He usually appreciates hanging around after his tests to pack-up and clean-up.</p>
<p>In three years, we have only been caught once having to pay an exorbitant fee to switch flights at the last minute because of a class requirement (and he paid it). Lately Southwest seems to be the airline of choice, both for schedule and price (and baggage and the ability to book one-way tickets).</p>
<p>We do try to book through more southern airports in the winter for the connections. Only once has a flight been canceled and I was able to catch it early enough in the day to rebook and not strand him in an airport overnight.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>How are you violating the terms of travel? You’re booking two round trip tickets and using all the legs you paid for. Completely legit. You aren’t “abandoning” a flight (the way you would if you were trying to fly amongst several cities and not taking one leg home, at which point I agree, you run the risk of your itinerary being cancelled).</p>
<p>^^we have been told that you only get flagged if you do not show up for one leg of any flight…agree with Pizzagirl…</p>
<p>I’ve done this numerous times for business, for example:</p>
<p>A) Chicago-Boston Tuesday
B) Boston-Chicago Friday</p>
<p>C) Chicago-Boston Monday
D) Boston-Chicago Thursday</p>
<p>I bought A&D as one and B&C as one. If I fly from Chicago to Boston on a Tuesday, I’m “allowed” to subsequently fly on a different ticket from Boston to Chicago that Friday - whether it’s the first of another round trip or just a one-way I happened to purchase. I don’t need to justify to the airline where I’m at at all times; for all they know, I take trains between Chicago and Boston to move me into position. There is no rule that says that my next flight out has to be from the city I just flew into. I often fly from Chicago to Newark and then Philly back to Chicago; I don’t need to justify that I took a car or cab between Newark and Philly. I’m pretty confident this is not a problem at all. The “abandoning” the flight is the problem.</p>
<p>But if you are super concerned, simply make the reservation under Mary Smith for one set and Mary A. Smith for the second ticket (as long as the kid’s ID supports both), or don’t put the frequent flyer number on one ticket until after the fact.</p>
<p>^^I have used this method once for S1’s flights at Thanksgiving^^ No problem. But it typically doesn’t save any $$. I think the prices bump up whether you’re flying one leg around a holiday or both.</p>
<p>Feel free to ignore me on the back to backs. But you might want to read this link:</p>
<p>[Airlines</a> punish back-to-back passengers](<a href=“Home - Elliott Report”>Home - Elliott Report)</p>
<p>all I can tell you is with the airlines struggling, they aren’t going to go easier on the old trick.</p>
<p>According to the article, the “back to back” assumes that one leg is unused…that is not the case in Pizzagirl’s example…</p>
<p>“With a back-to-back itinerary, a traveler buys two cheaper tickets but only uses half of each one, which still ends up costing less than booking a single, less-restricted ticket”</p>
<p>Key words here: Only uses half of each one…Pizzagirl’s example is that one is using both halves, albeit at different times…</p>
<p>But what is proposed here is different from what is in the article. In the article the passenger is not using part of the ticket but in the case above the passenger is using all four parts - just not paired up together… Surely they can’t punish that?</p>
<p>Not trying to cause trouble here, but genuinely asking! SCUalum - what you’re describing is a different practice – buying two round trips and not showing up for two of the four legs. How is what I’m proposing comparable to that? I’m flying everything that I’ve purchased. </p>
<p>In my example of
A) Chicago-Boston Tuesday
B) Boston-Chicago Friday</p>
<p>C) Chicago-Boston Monday
D) Boston-Chicago Thursday</p>
<p>If A&D are one ticket, I have no need to inform the airlines of my whereabouts in between my arrival in Boston in A and my departure from Boston at D. I am “allowed” to go wherever the heck I like and fly wherever the heck I like. I could fly back out of Boston the next day to New York or Chicago or San Francisco if I so desired, and as long as I come back and take my “D” flight, what concern is it of theirs?</p>
<p>Actually a business traveler might often genuinely have this scenario - traveling for 2 weeks to another city, but a personal concern or emergency has them returning to their home city over the weekend (hence the purchase of legs B&C). How would they be prohibited from B&C?</p>
<p>Parenthetically - a business partner of mine had to travel from Chicago to Shanghai. If she went from Chicago to Shanghai, the cost was $x … and if she booked Phila to Chicago to Shanghai – getting on the very same flight! – the cost was several thousand dollars less. So she wound up flying to Philadelphia, then turning around, boarding a flight to Chicago, and then the flight from Chicago to Shanghai (the very same flight she would have taken originating from Chicago). We really couldn’t justify a few thousand dollars extra to our client. Crazy!!</p>
<p>After getting burned a few times by prebuying return tickets, I now buy only one way unless the kid is home for a very short time like Thanksgiving or for a long weekend. You just don’t know what will crop up.</p>