Plane Tickets to the Caribbean
Plane tickets and air travel are some of my favorite things to dive into and sort out. Sometimes it’s a super easy process. Other times it’s a nightmare. For my first trip to the Caribbean, it actually worked out fairly well.
The general rule on plane tickets is that the sooner you buy them, the cheaper they are. This is usually a good rule of thumb for air fare, but most rules have exceptions. For example, shopping for plane tickets on a weekend might be more expensive than buying on a Tuesday. Also, the days you plan to fly can greatly affect the price of plane tickets.
For me, I wanted to take off from work and send the weekdays in the Caribbean. St Thomas in the US Virgin Islands to be exact. I currently live in Tulsa, Oklahoma. So my airport of choice might be TUL. I also don’t mind a little bit of a drive, so XNA in Arkansas is an option, as is OKC. Both are about 90 miles/minutes away. SWO is an hour away in my hometown of Stillwater, but all flights from there would have to connect in Dallas. Dallas would be about a 4 hour drive if I was feeling adventurous and wanted a flight from there. So with just over 2 weeks until I wanted to escape, I set about looking at my options.
Fly Local
My first look was for plane tickets from the local airport in Tulsa. I always start my travel plans with a visit to Google Flights. My initial search turned up a United flight for $228 from TUL to STT on Monday, June 3rd. A Sunday flight the day before would have been the same price. A flight home on Thursday June 6th was around $400. Friday flights were around the same. United offered a return flight for $432. I was disappointed to see Southwest didn’t fly to St Thomas. I did look at options with Frontier as I have a Go Wild pass. Frontier did not have flights available from Tulsa, so that wasn’t really a local option.
Plane Tickets a Little Far From Home
So I turned my search to flights from XNA and OKC. Ticket prices were about the same from both airports. I was surprised to find that Frontier didn’t offer flights from these airports to St Thomas. They had other flights available, and could get me as far as Puerto Rico, but no to St Thomas.
Airports Far, Far Away
I have zero problems driving a few hours for a great deal. So I gave Dallas a chance. Initial options were not that great. It appeared Spirit had flights for about $400 round trip per person, but then you have to add in bag fees and seat fees and it wasn’t worth it. One thing to note. Frontier did have flights from DFW to STT with a connection in Puerto Rico, however, not on Monday. Interestingly, the flight leaves a minute before midnight on Sunday. Talk about sneaky. When I looked, the flight was $460 and a Go Wild price hadn’t been posted. That was just one way. Return flights on Friday were surprisingly low… like $61. Tempting, but not enough to justify the drive.
What Plane Tickets Did I Purchase?
In the end, I option for United from Tulsa and pay for it with miles. It ended up costing about 60k miles each. That’s 120k miles for a round trip from the local airport. It would take 20 minutes to get there… and when we land we’re only 20 minutes from the house. The cash price would be $1339 for those tickets. Is it expensive, yes. Is it worth it… not sure.
Here’s the best part… those United tickets are refundable. I can choose to NOT use my miles and instead buy tickets outright if I wanted. Why would I do that? If they get cheaper, of course. Will they… actually, yes! Already, Frontier flights have come down in price. A $61 flight from STT to DFW is a steal. At $104 to get there… that’s a great deal as well. So that’s $165 round trip and less than a week from departure. If the plane doesn’t fill up, the Go Wild flight will be $37 each way. Sure, there are bag fees and seat fees… but if the overall savings is close to $1k AFTER those fees… then 8 hours of driving is a steal.
Be sure to check back after my trip to see what I ended up doing and what it ended up costing me.
