When planning for holidays most of us make decisions based on airfares. We certainly do! We like to use airline frequent flier or credit card points and are always looking for the best options for finding good deals on flights. Airfare is usually the biggest expense when planning trips. So when FlyLine, a new airfare booking engine, reached out to me about a collaboration, I was curious to find out more. We have used a few discount airfare sites but never really tried a membership-based airfare deal alert service. I used to work for SABRE, the reservation system behind American Airlines so I wanted to understand how FlyLine works. I started to do my little research into what FlyLine is and how it works and here is what I found and my review of FlyLine.
WHAT IS IN THIS POST
What is FlyLine
FlyLine is a membership-based booking engine that provides members with both exclusive and publicly available fares. Their exclusive fares are sourced directly from the GDS (Global Distribution System) and made available to their members at a low “wholesale” rate. The fares are made up of traditional single-carrier options and virtually interlined (multi-carrier on a singular ticket) options. These flights can sometimes save members up to 60% on international flights and 20% on domestic flights.
The basic concept behind FlyLine is that travelers can find flights at the same rates as a travel agent, without paying the agent commission or added costs that come with retail markup. Isn’t that something!
Note: This post was sponsored by FlyLine but as always all opinions and research are my own.
How does FlyLine work?
FlyLine is based on two main principles for generating savings for members: Wholesale rates and Virtually Interlining. The big savings come when you combine the two strategies and that’s how FlyLine finds the cheapest airfares for your flights. Here is what that means:
Wholesale Rates
FlyLine sources flights directly from 250+ airlines through the Global Distribution System(GDS). Commercial carriers like AA, Delta, BA, KLM, etc publish flights to the Airline Tariff Publishing Company (ATPCO). Travel agents and Online Travel Agencies (OTAs), such as Expedia or Travelocity, offer these to consumers typically after adding markup or retail fee. FlyLine offers “wholesale” rates to its members with ZERO markup or extra fees.
Virtually Interlining
FlyLine, also offers virtual interlining which currently is only offered by Kiwi. If you are wondering what Virtually InterLining is simply put, FlyLine connects two or more one-way flights from different carriers together to give you (the member) the best savings. This creates incredible savings for the subscribers and all fares have zero markups!
Can you interlink flights yourself? A travel hack that some savvy travelers do is to book two separate tickets to get a cheaper fare if it works out to be cheaper than a connection that an airline provides. It takes time and effort to find these yourself and since they are booked on separate tickets, it also means the two tickets are not linked. So the luggage will not be handled for you. You have to claim it and recheck it on the second flight or travel with just a carry-on. If it is a short connection and you miss the connecting flight you are on your own! If your first flight was canceled or delayed the second flight is going to cancel your ticket and leave without you since they don’t know about your first flight(it is on a separate ticket remember).
FlyLine’s Virtual interlining, link your flights and your baggage is checked all the way. Since FlyLine finds you these cheap fare deals and virtually interlines them for you there is a linkage between your two flights and is actually visible to the airlines. You can find more about it on their FlyLine 101 page.
By combining multiple routes into a singular fare they create a seamless transaction for their members that guarantees the flight connections and baggage transfers while offering an unmatched rate. These rates often provide huge savings especially when you are flying internationally. But when flying from one International hub to another (for example JFK to Amsterdam) there is less opportunity for multiple flight segments to add up to major savings. So you save more on the smaller airports and connections.
From time to time the airlines and OTAs execute flash sales and discounts that make their fares better than FlyLine fares for specific routes. When this happens FlyLine would display these flights ahead of theirs so that the member always gets the best deal.
Personalized Deal Alerts
You can setup up deal alerts on FlyLine. Set the destination, set the max price you’re willing to pay, choose your preferred airlines and FlyLine will send you an email notification when it finds a flight that fits your preferences. Similar to sites like Scotts Cheap Flights, Next Vacay and Dollar Flight Club.
With one kid in college and one in high school we typically travel during their school summer or winter breaks, which also is the most expensive time to travel in terms of airfare and hotels. While we are not flexible with dates we are usually flexible with locations. It is all about getting away as a family and spending some time together! So it helps to set up alerts for locations that we would like to visit and save some vacation dollars. Money saved on the airfare can go towards some memorable and fun activities on the trip!
FlyLine Memberships
With a FlyLine membership, you can easily find cheap rates on flights you are already booking online. When you search on FlyLine, they will also display the cheapest fare, whether it’s a public or FlyLine fare. There are 2 kinds of membership Basic and Premium.
Basic Members are limited to six (6) bookings every twelve (12) months. And Premium Members enjoy unlimited booking. FlyLine members can add their friends and family to their booking for even more savings or upgrade to premium to create two unique user accounts for only $30 more.
Whether you passively monitor prices with your personalized deal alerts or actively look for deals with the FlyLine booking engine, you are sure to make back your membership in savings less than a year, sometimes even in a single purchase. Read the review(s) and then Join FlyLine here.
Savings Examples
I wouldn’t recommend a service that I haven’t tried, I spent some time in the last couple of weeks researching a few trips our family is planning for later this year to see what deals I could find on FlyLine and comparing them to what I could find elsewhere. We have a daughter who flies home from college every couple of months and I’m hoping to go to Chennai to see my dad later this year. I searched for both the trips from my home airport of DFW (Dallas Fort Worth) to see what FlyLine comes up with and here is what I found.
Keep in mind in the airline world luxury isn’t often discounted and inventory on last-minute flights (a purchase less than two weeks from departure) is typically low and thus not priced at wholesale rates. So the best bet for finding cheap airfares are trying to find flights two weeks in advance from a major airport for economy seats.
Sacramento – Dallas
The cheapest fare from SMF to DFW was $280 while the direct flight from SMF was $527 on FlyLine. When I priced it on Skyscanner and directly on AA it was $457. The cheaper fare on FlyLine is an option if you don’t mind taking multiple flights. I would probably go with the direct flight on this one.
So basically select your domestic destination. Be flexible and go with a virtually interlined fare. Select a departure date that is at least two weeks out. This is the easiest way to save on domestic air travel with FlyLine. If you are loyal to certain airlines, you can search for the cheapest flights on a single carrier as well, as I did with American Airlines on the last one.
Dallas – Chennai
I had better luck with my International flight to Chennai. FlyLine found a fare of $1297 as the cheapest flight. Looks like this was a virtually interlinked fare with British Airways and SriLankan Airlines (which I love, see why here). For the Cheapest fare, Skyscanner showed a fare of $1361.
And for the fastest/quickest option, FlyLine found a fare of $1545 while Skyscanner came with a fare of $2021($476 savings) along with a rate on Qatar for $1733($188 savings). That’s pretty decent savings, isn’t it!
FlyLine Review Recap
I hope this review of FlyLine helps you with your search for finding cheap flights for your travels! FlyLine gives members direct access to wholesale rates and exclusive virtually interlined fares. More often than not FlyLine finds the cheapest flights on international tickets and they are pretty competitive with domestic prices. They are transparent when there are sales that are sometimes run by Airlines and Online Travel Agencies that can’t be matched. This means you will see the cheapest fare when you do the search on the FlyLine portal or app, whether it is a public fare or FlyLinefare.
I hope you found this FlyLine Review useful when looking for cheap flights. FlyLine is available as an iOS and Android app that you can download to your phone or you can access it from your PC. Save time and money join FlyLine to find the cheapest airfares in the market!
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I just started using this too, what a great tool!
How have I not heard of them before?! I have them bookmarked to check for fares for my next flights