Mr. X does Negril (2010) with No Reservations

[Mr. X]

Mr. X Does Negril (2010) with No Reservations



Chapter 11 – Airfare Revisited

This trip or any vacation is not on for me until the airfare is booked. If I don’t have tickets then not even a trip just a dream. Once I get tickets then it is on. Can get excited. In season you better have hotel lined up at time you book airfare. Offseason not problem to find a place to stay but the airfare can get booked up. Fewer flights I guess. If I got tickets good chance no matter what we are going on vacation. No airline tickets yet? Then just talking theoretical vacation.

Recent thread on Negril.com about staying for one (2) week vacation or two (1) week vacations from our favorite San Francisco couple. For me it is much better to go on two (1) week vacations. Easy Choice. This has to do with how long we can be away from home, pets, work etc. Gives you shorter time between trips etc.

In our example say it cost them (Daisy and Markus) $600 each ticket from SFO. So that’s 2 people so $1200 to fly one trip and $2400 to fly 2 trips. If you divide $2400 over 14 day trip then airfare is costing them $171 per day. If you divide $1200 over 14 days then it is a more manageable $86 per day. Other factors come in to play such as time it takes to arrive in Jamaica. In D and M’s case they have long flights and layovers. Lots of travel time. So (2) trips twice as much travel time. So while it is much better for me to do two (1) week trips it may be better coming from California (not direct to Jamaica) to do one (2) week trip.

So that means if you live far away you cannot come for a week?
No it has to do with many factors. Direct Flight. Say poolguywindsor is coming from Windsor, Ontario. I am an American Idiot so I don’t exactly know where that is but suffice to say somewhere in Canada. This trip he decides to come by himself and stay for 7 days. He says he has paid $350 for a direct flight. Even though he is coming all the way from Canada his airline cost per day is only $50 and a direct flight. Same example instead of coming by himself he brings family and pays for 6 tickets for a total of $2100 and only stays a week. So now the airfare cost per day is $300 and that’s getting a great rate of $350 per ticket. I don’t even want to think about how much it would cost per day if tickets were expensive. Yikes. You can do the math for you and ur party. Once you get to Jamaica the costs are the same for everyone. Getting to Jamaica costs are different for everyone. Travel time, number of people you are paying for, and actual cost of airfare are major factors.

For us it is (2) in our party. So for 2010, I paid a total of $474 (8 days). So we are at $59 per day. Got a steal. Still because we are just here for a week its costing us almost 60 dollars a day for airfare. In 2009 I paid $900 total and we stayed for same 8 days so that works out to $113 a day for my airfare cost. Looking at that number it seems high and don’t even want to venture a guess at what some people are having to pay. I guess around $100 per day and above starts to be (or seem) expensive to me.

People coming from far away say England then the cost is much higher. I understand these peoples need to stay longer due to the high cost of airfare.

Of course the regulars know all this and they are constantly coming up with ways to stay longer and spend less and still have it pretty nice. In our particular case cannot go for any longer and whatever it costs us on airline tickets we already paid so if it was cheap or expensive it’s irrelevant now. Distant memory. But when I look at total budget for trip ($2400). And planning future trips even getting a steal on airfare because of short length of stay it’s still costing us $60 a day for airfare. Well I guess that’s for 2 people so actually only $30 a day per person. Damn I knew I got a deal. Airfare is the biggest cost variable that i can not control.