Today’s tip comes out of this fun story about a woman who got a 189-seat plane to herself in late October. Book the last outbound flight of the year on a seasonal route—like “Karon Grieve, a 57-year-old mother from Ayrshire, Scotland” did—and you may well end up with a plane to yourself (or close to it). Karon was flying from Glasgow to Heraklion, Crete, on Jet2, a UK budget-friendly airline. Her favorite thing about the flight, as she told the Boston Globe? “Just feeling like a VIP for the first time in my life,” Grieve gushed. “Just being made to feel special was fantastic.
There’s no guarantee that you’d get the same experience if you sought it out, of course, but as end-of-season flights are bound to be less crowded, this is a potential perk worth identifying. If you have to take a holiday later (or earlier) in the season than you’d like, keep this in mind!
Related: When to Plan a European Vacation According to Arthur Frommer
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Another “trick” that works sometimes is look for repositioning flights. I was in Little Rock, Ar. several years ago and when looking at booking my return to Newark there was a Delta non-stop (direct) listed with a flight number of 9989. Normally Delta does not fly non-stop on that route.
There were about 12 people on board the MD-11 — myself and one other person were upgraded and the rest in a 100+ seat coach cabin.
Turns out the plane had flown a charter with a college sports team out of Newark and they needed to get the plane back.