Just a few tools I've recently found useful in booking international travel. This time, air travel:
Airline and airport links
Aircraft, airline and airport codes
Airline route maps
Airline route updates blog
Fare code listings
Farecompare
Flyertalk's general links
Flyertalk's mileage run links
Frugal travel guy blog
IATA codes
Low fare search
No frills airlines
Plane crash info
Around here, most brainstorming starts with a look at the airline route maps to see who flies where we're thinking about going. Maybe you can devise an interesting way to get there you'd never thought of. This worked great when we needed transportation between Finland and Rwanda. A look around showed Ethiopian Airlines would pick us up in nearby Stockholm and deliver us to Kampala, Uganda. We got an overnight trip on the Silja Line's "party boat" between Helsinki and Stockholm and a lovely day in Stockholm as an unexpected part of the itinerary.
The airline route updates blog has proved useful, too. Just recently, thanks to them, we found a new South Africa to Walvis Bay nonstop. We need to be in Walvis Bay around New Year's Eve, and that opens up the possibility of just popping into Namibia at the last minute, instead of waiting around a day in Windhoek - which is perfectly nice, don't get me wrong, but we were there year before last.
More tools soon. Next time we'll look at international ferries.
See photos in the Finland, Sweden, Uganda, Rwanda and Namibia galleries at EarthPhotos.com.
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