Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Can you buy the same ticket at a lower price if you buy it from another country?

travel.stackexchange.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 339 posts

Re: Can you buy the same ticket at a lower price if you buy it from another country?

#141

Post by fwlr »

AdamN wrote: post #103
fwlr wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe. My experience with booking international flights at various schedules from “tomorrow” to “1 year in advance” is that airlines don’t give a discount for booking far in advance, past about one week out it’s all the same. I haven’t investigated thoroughly, though.

I find 2 and 4 weeks to be the magic cutoff points for discounts but maybe I'm just seeing a pattern where none exists.

Also plausible. Given that even when you book a year in advance you are booking a specific flight time, I don’t see many big efficiency wins for airlines here.

Re: Can you buy the same ticket at a lower price if you buy it from another country?

#142

Post by listenallyall »

habitue wrote: post #37

Do travel agents have some benefit when travelling internationally or something? I have not heard about travel agents since the 90s. Maybe I'm missing some incredible deals? I kinda expected them to not exist any more

> I have not heard about travel agents since the 90s

Right, because "travel agents" were a front for a network of Cold War Russian spies with an incredibly high skill at impersonating a typical American family -- no accents, real kids, very middle-class. It all fell apart after an FBI agent moved in next door to one of them. I heard one of the female spies was a dead ringer for the actress who played Felicity on television.

Re: Can you buy the same ticket at a lower price if you buy it from another country?

#143

Post by cutemonster »

KptMarchewa wrote: post #120
acjacobson wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And sadly industry dwarfs the CO2 emissions of this frequent flyer (and the rest of us personally). While it's admirable to work on ways of ways to reduce your personal footprint (especially as a way to communicate the problem to others) - actually impacting CO2 levels needs to come from broad regulation. The numbers are just too large and skewed.

Industry provides valuable products for billions of people. Hundreds of reckless flights that could be zoom meetings benefit no one.

Industry also fills the oceans with plastics ... And makes climate change happen

(Not saying flying a lot is good)

Re: Can you buy the same ticket at a lower price if you buy it from another country?

#144

Post by gambiting »

dotancohen wrote: post #119
gambiting wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uhm, it's not directly comparable - cars have different specs in each country and it's very rare you can spec them 1:1 exactly. As an example - you'd find that the starting price of cars in Poland is much lower than in say, UK, but if you compare the spec the "base" model in Poland is missing a lot of equipment that's just standard in the UK to keep the cost down as much as possible.

I don't know about Poland specifically, but in some cases the missing equipment could be critical safety devices mandated by law. For example, from working with import, I learned that in India vehicles can be sold without airbags, and even some structural safety features (reinforced firewall and front frame rails) are not installed on Indian-market cars (mostly to remove weight, actually, not cost). Also, some market…

Sure. In my example I was comparing some cars like the VW Polo and the basic spec Polish car had an extremely basic dot matrix display for the radio while the UK car had a full colour 7 inch display as standard. The polish car didn't have air con at all, while in UK it was standard. The Polish car was missing cruise control, any infotainment buttons on the wheel and it had a non-split rear seating bench - all standard on UK spec. I don't think it had any safety differences at all.

Re: Can you buy the same ticket at a lower price if you buy it from another country?

#145

Post by madsbuch »

sampo wrote: post #131
madsbuch wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How? A kg of fuel should have roughly the same CO2 emission regardless of how it is produced? The thing it that synthetic fuels are cyclic. We collect the emitted CO2 again.

> How? Like this: > The thing it that synthetic fuels are cyclic. We collect the emitted CO2 again.

Yes, you are focusing on the entire life cycle.

This is a bad argument, as you can employ the same argument with fossil fuels.

Fuels emit CO2. we can produce fuels by sequestration.

Re: Can you buy the same ticket at a lower price if you buy it from another country?

#146

Post by twic »

snthd wrote: post #134
pjc50 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> does not share the opinion that climate change should be addressed by reducing emissions. The opinion that it should be addressed or not? Because there's no feasible route to addressing it that doesn't involve reducing fossil emissions.

It's the opposite IMHO. Reducing emissions directly will never work because of the Jevons Paradox[0] (at least for CO2 - crazy-high-CO2-equivalent-pollutants are something else). The only thing that matters is preventing extraction of fossil fuels in the first place. That's why the fossil fuel industry promoted the idea of "carbon footprints", and why Adtech make their datacenters renewable - greenwashing their busin…

Why on earth would the Jevon paradox apply to CO2, an output of industrial processes which can be disposed of for free, not an input?

Re: Can you buy the same ticket at a lower price if you buy it from another country?

#147

Post by twic »

favsq wrote: post #117
WheatMillington wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

You have been brainwashed into lowering your standard of life. You shouldn't be upset at others because of that - instead, work on yourself.

I can assure you i have not lowered my standard of life by not cramming myself into an economy seat for an international flight 10-15 times a year.

Re: Can you buy the same ticket at a lower price if you buy it from another country?

#148

Post by makeitdouble »

WheatMillington wrote: post #91
yosito wrote: post #67

I've been flying internationally 10-15 times a year for ~10 years. Different routes and destinations each time. I've spent a lot of time searching for hacks like this that let me save a few bucks on flight tickets. Sometimes it works. Sometimes you find that a flight is cheaper depending on which country's website or currency you use to book. Flight tickets are priced dynamically using a variety of factors to determi…

[flagged]

You have your heart in the right place.

It's also so much more complicated. For instance I took 2 flights last year, but ordered hundreds of goods, all coming from a lot of places around the world, including some by plane that were needed within days.

Same for food, same for so many other daily actions that have impact beyond my immediate sphere and I have no idea how or why.

People ought to make an effort to not go overboard, but the generic "the gov should deal with balancing it" is I think a pretty valid answer. Individuals trying to manage their own CO2 is just impossible when we have no idea what each corporations involved are doing behind on their side.

Re: Can you buy the same ticket at a lower price if you buy it from another country?

#149

Post by WeylandYutani »

WheatMillington wrote: post #91
yosito wrote: post #67

I've been flying internationally 10-15 times a year for ~10 years. Different routes and destinations each time. I've spent a lot of time searching for hacks like this that let me save a few bucks on flight tickets. Sometimes it works. Sometimes you find that a flight is cheaper depending on which country's website or currency you use to book. Flight tickets are priced dynamically using a variety of factors to determi…

[flagged]

And the response of government is making flying more expensive. Which only inconveniences working class folks and not tech bros and CEOs.

Re: Can you buy the same ticket at a lower price if you buy it from another country?

#150

Post by gpvos »

unsupp0rted wrote: post #140
WheatMillington wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Don’t take CO2 behavior instruction from people who have children. I can fly international 365 days a year for decades. But my children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren will have 0 carbon footprint because they’ll never exist. Conversely, eat bugs and recycle coke cans if you want, but that’s a fraction of a fraction of a drop in the bucket if you’ve had even one kid.

So who's going to solve tomorrow's climate problems? A well-raised kid is one of the better ways to improve the future.

Also, the way the human brain's reward system works, lots of people will say: I have no kids, now I can take an extra far-away holiday.

Post reply on HN