To Find Cheaper Fares, Sign Up For Airline Newsletters

And, of course a whole bunch of people just said, duh.  This really does fall into the topic of common sense.  Airlines will send out announcements about fare sales through newsletters, so it’s always a good thing to be subscribed to your favorite airline’s list.

But, there are also good reasons to sign up for many airline newsletters, especially those that compete against your primary carriers.  The best examples of this for me, living in Washington DC, are Virgin America, JetBlue and Porter Airlines.  Why?  Competition.

Virgin America competes on IAD-LAX and IAD-SFO with the likes of United and American Airlines.  When Virgin throws out a fare sale, those two are likely to match those fares in some form or fashion.  So, while I haven’t flown Virgin America in about 5 years and have no plans to do so anytime soon, they’ve saved me a bunch of cash by jumping on price matches from my preferred carrier.

To a lesser degree, JetBlue sales used to impact United pricing on competing routes out of IAD, though United doesn’t try to match their offers as much anymore.

And, Porter creates some disruption from DC to certain Canadian cities.

Recently I fell on another reason to subscribe.  Let’s call it the surprise discount, because it’s the first one I can really recall seeing.  I got a 10% off promo code  from Virgin American for my birthday.

Oh, and since I have no plans to fly them anytime soon, if someone needs a 10% off code, leave a comment on this post.  If more than one person replies, I’ll randomly pick someone tomorrow.