How to Save $500+ on Your Next International Flight
I consider myself a travel expert, but do you know what I’m not good at when it comes to travel? Finding cheap flights. I’ve read these tips about booking on certain days and flying on certain days and clearing your cookies before you search for a flight, but they never seem to make much difference for me. I sort of gave up. But then I found out about flight clubs, and I had to try one. The Dollar Flight Club asked me to try out their premium membership, and I wanted to share with you how they can help you save money on your next flight.
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What is the Dollar Flight Club?
The Dollar Flight Club is a flight deal alert subscription service. They help more than 500,000 travel enthusiasts save significantly on international flights (average of $500+ savings per round trip flight) to their dream destinations. DFC flight searches through data from various sources to find deals that are 60-90% below the average round trip price, and then they send discounted flights to you via email and text so you can get them before they’re gone.
So instead of spending hours searching for a good flight deal for your next vacation, you can sit back and wait for the deals to come to you. This does require a little flexibility, but how exciting would it be to travel to a destination that wasn’t on your radar before?
How does it work?
When you sign up for a membership, you have to fill in a few important pieces of information in your profile. You can set your home airport, or a handful of airports if you live near more than one. If you want, you can also set up favorite regions of the world or favorite airlines. It’s short and sweet so you can start getting those deal alerts quickly.
Since I live in Berlin, I chose both Berlin airports, plus a handful of other airports I could reasonably get to if there was a deal I wanted to jump on. I also put Atlanta in my profile so I could see what kinds of deals those of you in the US might see in your inbox.
Now I get emails from DFC almost every day with flight deals for destinations around the world. Here are a few examples I’ve seen:
- Berlin to Budapest $20 round trip (standard fare $250)
- Atlanta to Medellin, Colombia $337 round trip (standard fare $750)
- Atlanta to Beijing $532 round trip (standard fare $1,000)
- Berlin to Panama City $$487 (standard fare $1,050)
- Atlanta to St. Thomas $318 (standard fare $700)
- Atlanta to Venice $489 (standard fare $950)
Standard fares and the savings amounts are included in the emails, so you’ll know just how much you would normally spend. The emails also tell you the airline the flight is with and a time frame. So sometimes the flight deal is for next week, but sometimes is several months into the future. Most deals will go up within 24 hours, so you have to act fast.
Why should you get a premium membership?
The Dollar Flight club offers a free membership, but you will only get some of the deals. The deal you’re really hoping for might not make it to your inbox. And as a free member, you can only choose a departure region, not a specific airport.
But the premium membership costs only $40 a year! It’s $9 per month if you want to pay monthly instead of annually…but that comes out to $108 for the whole year, so it’s well worth getting the annual membership.
Here are the benefits of a premium membership:
- Every single flight deal for their departure airport
- Filter by specific departure airport(s)
- 4x more mistake fares and secret deals than free members get
- Instant SMS text alerts
- Get deal alerts first, before free members
- No ads (just straight flight deals)
- Premium Membership Partner Perks
I think that sounds like a fantastic deal for only $40 a year! Now I don’t worry about searching and searching for cheap flights. I just let the Dollar Flight Club emails come to me so I can save money on flights.
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Ali is an expert at packing and loves to travel. On Travel Made Simple, she shares her best tips for packing less, dealing with layovers, planning travel itineraries, and more tips that will help you have the best vacation. Originally from the US, she now lives in Berlin, Germany with her husband and their adorable Yorkie.
David Krasner
July 11, 2019 @ 3:11 am
I travel with my wife from New Zealand to the UK every 9 months or so . We also have a daughter who lives in Portland Oregon? would your club be able to work on multiple stops? eg Wellington to London with an over night stop over then london to Portland Oregon with a stay of 10 days fo;;owed by Portland Oregon to Wellington NZ. It doesn’t matter where we stop over when going from Wellington NZ to London as long as we have a break at a hotel before flying on. to Portland Oregon. We have a daughter near london + grand children etc, and same in Portland Oregon? The membership fee looks to be very reasonable. Would both my wife and myself have to become members. Kind regards, David
Ali Garland
July 11, 2019 @ 11:58 am
Hi David! It’s not exactly a flight search engine, so signing up for a membership would let you set up alerts for certain departure cities/airports. So you would put in your profile that you’re interested in flight alerts for Wellington, and when there are deals from Wellington, you’ll get an email. Those flight deals could be to almost anywhere around the world though. You can set multiple airports, so you could set Wellington and Auckland to see what kinds of flights you could get departing from New Zealand (because if there was a good deal on a flight from Auckland, it’s not too expensive for you to book a separate flight from Wellington to Auckland) and you could set Heathrow and Gatwick to see what kinds of flight deals come up from London. But it’s a bit better if you’re flexible about when you’re going and even where you’re going. I get all kinds of destinations in my inbox, and sometimes it’s for next month or sometimes it’s next year. Dollar Flight Club is basically searching for great flight deals from cities you’ve set in your profile, and then you click on the link in the email and it sends you to whatever flight search engine has the deal. So that also means you would only need one membership, you and your wife would NOT need separate ones.