Check International Airline Websites for Deals

[innocentsabroadisus]

When booking international flights, don't forget to compare fares to those on the airline's foreign-language website. If the airline is running a sale in a different regional market, you may be able to score sizeable savings on your overseas flight. For example, a recent search on Polish airline LOT's English-language website found a March flight from New York to Warsaw priced at $968.75, but the Polish-language website (with help from Google Chrome's translation feature) turned up fares from 2,641.01 PLN (around $849.64)—for the exact same flight. If your credit card has a low international-transaction fee, the savings could be well worth it.

[danielboldea]

Good point. I do however think that it is the country setting that affects the pricing and not necessarily the language.

Quite frequently the minute you type in your departure city it automatically takes you to the departure country's website.

I would also suggest caution when booking domestic flights on foreign websites because some of the rates are only valid for residents of that specific country. I have seen this on TAP website and some SA carriers. I don't know how they enforce it, but I wouldn't want to be denied boarding and have to pay a high priced ticket the day of.....

[LL_Travelfan]

I recently tried to book a flight from Johannesburg to Kasana on Botswana Airline. The price was about $40 less than on the US site. However, the clincher was it could only be booked by a Botswana Travel Agency. I e-mailed the Botswana Agent we are using for our Inter-African booking and it remains to be seen if they could get the lower price.

[bonniejoy03]

This happens with LAN and the South American flights also. Nationals typically receive a lower fare than visitors. Many times your travel partners in the countries will book your fare as LL noted. This saved us money flying to Atacama in Chile. Also, we have used AVIOS points on BA's s site to book domestic and international connecting flights in South America.

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I also ran into this when booking local fares in Costa Rica and Mexico - residents get much lower fares and even if we had a local trying to get the fare for us, they were not able to. Peru & Ecuador do the same thing - locals get lower fares.

[LL_Travelfan]

I recently tried to book a flight from Johannesburg to Kasana on Botswana Airline. The price was about $40 less than on the US site. However, the clincher was it could only be booked by a Botswana Travel Agency. I e-mailed the Botswana Agent we are using for our Inter-African booking and it remains to be seen if they could get the lower price.

We completed our Botswana Air booking via a Botswana Travel Agency. It turns out we wound up with the higher fare. I guess since it was booked with an American passport and an American credit card, we did not qualify for the lower air fare.