Flight Booking Advice

Insuring a Flight

When booking a flight for a holiday, it’s important to make sure that your ticket money is in some way insured, should it come to pass that you cannot take part in the intended trip. 

If you have to cancel a tour for your own reasons, such as illness, bereavement, or some other change in circumstances, then the non-flight operator will not be responsible for your flight costs, so you will want to have insurance in place. The same goes for the flight cost if the trip is cancelled due to problems at the destination: war, plague or natural catastrophe. Covid 19 proved good insurance is not to be sneezed at. In the case of such events, assuming a fitting replacement trip cannot be organised, the operator with whom you’ve booked is liable to return monies paid to them for the trip… but not the flight.

It is often possible to insure your flight with the company through which you book a flight, or the airline itself. But it’s usually better value to be covered on the general travel policy you obtain covering medical cover and other losses for your overall trip. In many cases an insurer will not cover a holiday, or the costs of flights, booked more than six months before a trip. So you might want to check this before putting your money down on a flight. 

When to Book a Flight

There are big fluctuations in the cost of international flights and if there were a fixed time in advance to book that was noticeably cheaper, then folks would book at this point and prices would rise… if you scan the internerd for advice on this, there are many opinions available, with 50-ish days prior seeming to be the most popular point.

It should also be noted that airline schedules are rarely fixed more than six months in advance. Booking earlier than this could well mean you end up with a schedule you didn’t want, accepting a refund and having to re-book. 

Where/How to Book a Flight

Using a general flight search engine like Skyscanner is a good starting point. 

Use your search engine to get a wide view of what is available for the required route. Put your final destination, not the airport at which you arrive in the given country. If your tour start point is in Chandīgarh, India, then enter this as your destination airport and the search engine (whether a general one, or of a specific airline) will work out the itinerary for you.  This has the added benefit of the airline having responsibility for your itinerary all the way through to the destination, so if Flight One is delayed, you will not lose Flight Two because you were late.

Having chosen your itinerary, make a quick check with the website of the airline providing the flight. Sometimes ticketing agents can give a decent discount, but if the price difference is only a matter of £15-30, then book directly with the airline. It’s always easier to get compensation for delays, choose seats and get automated status updates without an agency as middleman.