Tiffany Raiford
I laugh in the face of “extras” when booking my airline tickets. As a frequent traveler, I’ve learned a thing or two about flying and traveling in general, and a lot of that has to do with the best ways not to waste money. You don’t get to go to some of the most amazing places in the world without realizing precisely how you are wasting your money, especially when you have four kids and you know that they’re all going to college some day (and three are girls whose weddings my husband dreads like the plague). Of the most valuable lessons I’ve learned in airline travel is that you do not need to pay for expensive seats for any flight – ever. Airlines like to make us think that our fare is low when we book, but then they add things like $30 seats that are close to the front (I’ll save my $180 and my family and I will sit a few rows back and exit the plane 30 seconds later, thanks) or $30 “extra legroom” seats that give you two additional inches of space. Let’s not even get into priority boarding that basically allows you to get on the plane 30 minutes earlier than necessary (where there is not a bartender serving you one last glass of vino) or luggage fees.
The worst waste of money on any flight, including Jet Blue, is the expense of extra legroom seats. Guess what? You can get them free of charge almost every single time if you just follow some pretty basic instructions. If you want to save a few bucks and still get more room on your flight, just take my advice and follow these instructions.
Book Your Flight
The first thing you’re going to want to do is head to the Jet Blue website and book your flight. On the home page you can choose your departure airport, your arrival airport and your travel dates as well as the number of passengers traveling with you and perform a search.
The next step is to choose your flights. You get the option of choosing your times of departure both there and back, and that makes travel nice for you since it’s at your convenience. Once you do that, you’ll enter your personal information. This includes your name, address, email address, contact information and your TrueBlue number, if you have one. You’ll do this for all the passengers for whom you are buying tickets, and you will then continue your search.
The next page is the most important page. This is the one on which you will choose your seats. You will see a diagram of your flight and you will see which seats are available, which ones have already been selected by other guests and which ones are available for a fee. You do not want to choose any of these seats. As a matter of fact, you want to scroll down to the bottom of the page and choose the “Skip Seat Selection for now” option and move on. You will then pay for your flight.
Head to the Airport
As the time your flight departs draws near, you will have approximately 24 hours before your flight to check into your flight. This means that you can either check in online or at the airport. It does not matter which one you choose, but your chances of being given an extra legroom seat at no charge increase the longer you want, so it is our suggestion that you wait until you reach the airport to check into your flight.
Once you are at the airport and checking in, just ask to have an extra legroom seat. You will be surprised how many times the airline attendant will give you that seat at no cost. And if you’re lucky and the flight was quite full, you probably were assigned to that seat at check in, anyway.
Ask
Another great way to receive an extra legroom seat is to ask at the gate. The gate attendants for Jet Blue are friendly and very customer service-oriented. If there are no other seats available, the airline has no choice but to give you one of these seats at no extra cost. Of course, there are times when you might not be able to get a seat like this if others have already booked them or if you are on a flight without many of these seats available in the first place. But the lesson here is that you never know what you might get until you ask for it. What you do know, however, is that there is no reason to pay the additional money for a seat on a flight like this.
It’s also important to keep in mind that if you have layovers, you’re going to have to ask for these seats at each flight. You could ask in advance when you check in, but oftentimes it’s far easier to get this seat when you just wait until you are at the gate and ready to board your connecting flight. It’s a very simple way to ensure that you are almost guaranteed the seat that you want without paying the fee that most people are charged to obtain this seat.
A few Tips
One of the best ways to ensure you will get one of the extra legroom seats without paying a fee is to wait and book your ticket as close to departure as possible so that you can ensure most of the other seats on the flight are already taken by others. Of course, that’s not always possible when it comes to booking travel as flight prices rise dramatically the longer you wait. But if you can wait, you have a better shot at being given one of these seats. Otherwise, wait to book a seat, ask and see what you can come up with when you get to the gate. They’re nice seats, but they are not as nice as the charge makes them out to be.
Photos by Getty Images
Comments
Loading…