Booking your Flights, Part 4 – We have a Winner!

Finally, the end of this series! I’ve been travelling a lot lately so thanks for waiting!

So now convinced to go around the world and knowing where I want to go, how do I now book my flights?

My experience has provided me many options. There’s a story behind each one, which if you don’t mind I’d like to share to see if this option is for you. This is Part 4.

You can find Part 1 here, which focuses on buying a Round the World ticket via SkyTeam in the Philippines (spoiler alert: not recommended)  Part 2 here, which is buying a Round the World ticket via Star Alliance (spoiler alert: great, but expensive) .

Airtreks in Part 3 was quite a good option and I almost ended there. Great service, easy to use site, and cost is pretty good. So what was missing?

Well, I wanted more control in my itinerary. Although Airtrek was good in picking the cities, to pick the actual flights you had to get the Airtreks guy on the phone (they’ll call you from the US) in order to work it out.

Can’t I do that by myself?

Wouldn’t you want to have control on choosing your actual departure and arrival times, to know what you airline options are, to know the cost impact of changing flights times and/or airlines? I’d love that, and Airtreks wasn’t able to supply that.

ATTEMPT #4 – Indie by BootsNAll

Enter BootsNAll.com (read as “boots and all”). Bootsnall was a great resource for my round the world travel. Lots of great tips… and imagine my delight when I saw they had the BEST tool that had everything I wanted in creating your itinerary!!

The tool is here: http://indie.bootsnall.com

O-M-G. After going through three different attempts, finding Indie by BootsNAll was like going through a jungle and finding a beautiful desert oasis. Based on my experience so far, this is the by far, the absolute best tool to planning your trip.

Let’s see what it has going for it:

• The site was FAST. Very easy to use, very user friendly. Everything makes sense. No flash needed!
• When you click search fares, the estimated price comes out immediately! 
• According to the site, it searches 500 airlines for the lowest fare.
• Once you have the fare click Select.

You are now brought to the most wonderful flight itinerary screen I’ve seen in all my research. What can you do here?

• You see your ACTUAL Flights. With actual departure and arrival times, number of stops, total flight time.
• Even better you can CHOOSE your flights! Click Edit and you’ll be given all the possible options.
• These options can be SORTED by all the different criteria you can think of. Departure Times, Arrival Times, Travel Times, Cost. You can even choose flights to +/- 3 days. Oh wow. I’m in heaven!!! 

And here’s another advantage. Once you’re done you can SAVE your route easily. And you can try another route. You can try another. And another. This tool allows you to play and tweak your itinerary as much as you want so you get the actual flights you want, at the actuals times and the actual cost. It’s the best darned thing since sliced bread.

Booking via Indie by BootsNAll

• Very simple and feature packed website to create an itinerary (fast & responsive)
• Itinerary will be given an estimated price RANGE immediately once you finish your itinerary.
• You can view, adjust, change, sort and modify ALL your flights and flight options that will fit your desired timing and cost.
• The Estimated Price is MUCH CHEAPER than Star Alliance and Skyteam.
• When you’re ready to book, all you need is have your credit card ready and you’re good to go.

And so ladies and gentlemen, I crown Indie by BootsNAll as my best option in booking your flights

.And yes, this is the exact tool I used to eventually book my flights.

Try it out, and see for yourself.  Even if you don’t plan to make a round the world trip soon, this tool is quite fun to play with and who knows? Maybe you’ll take that trip too one day.

And so we end the Booking your Flight series. We’ll soon be talking about bags, clothes, vaccinations, and how to choose what to do when you get there! More content awaits!

Leo

(P.S. Just to be clear I am not affiliated in any way to BootsNAll, AirTreks, Skyteam or Star Alliance. Just a guy going on his first trip around the world and wants to share what he learned. Excelsior!)