As far as flying with others goes, you will be flying alone, with a small group or with a large group. Nowadays most flights are booked online, though there are limitations about the number of passengers that you can book flights for at a time from the airlines and the Online Travel Agencies (OTAs).
Their online forms will allow you to book flights for 9 or fewer persons in one booking. So, if your group has 10 or more people, usually you will have to get in touch with them through email or you can call them up with your details.
Normally, you can expect to get good ofertas de vuelos para grupos from them, as they will be able to book a number of seats together, allowing them to meet their target of having all of their seats booked.
Expect good offers
It is widely known that the airlines come up with offers for such group bookings. You can even ask them if they will be offering any group flight discounts when you get in touch with them for the first time.
When we go for a purchase, we often ask for discounts when we buy anything in bulk. Here you will be booking flights in bulk, hence there is nothing wrong in asking for or expecting discounts.
Yes, obviously the discounts will make your trip cheaper, but this will again be decided by the amount of discount you are offered. The retailers will have the option of offering a discount per ticket or they will be offering a flat discount.
Other ways to fly as a group
If you have a large group, you can even look for chartered flights that will take you to any destination of your choice.
So, when will you be flying as a group? You will be seeking Group flights when you have a large family flying together, when you are with your friends going on a holiday or to a game, or when you are traveling with your colleagues for a business convention.
These flights will be cheaper when you fly domestically than if you fly internationally. You may have found some offers online all by yourself, but you will need to find out if these are applicable to the group that you will be flying with.
Who is paying?
As for financing your flights, either one of you will be treating everyone with free flights, or more likely, all of you will be making individual contributions.
Mostly you all will prefer to be seated next to each other and the airline or the OTAs will try to do everything they can for you in this regards.
If you are after round trip flights, you will be getting different seats, so efforts will need to be make sure that you get the best seats while returning too. In the case of companies, they will usually offer flights to their employees for a trip.
However, no matter what kind of group you are, you will have passengers with different flying requirements.
We are all different
For a large group, you will usually expect Economy seats as these are the cheapest but some among you may prefer privacy and look for business class or first class seats.
So, you must provide the requirements of all members of your group clearly at the time of booking for the right boletos aereos. Again, some of you will be vegans and you will need to ask airlines or OTAs if such meals are on offer.
The low-cost airlines charge separately for baggage, Wi-Fi connections and meals & beverages, while most major airlines will include all this in the airfare they are charging.
So, you can either do all the calculation or rely on the persons you get in touch with to give you all the information.
What to avoid?
In the case of groups, you can get into trouble if you get in touch with more than one OTA for the same group. The OTAs will be contacting airlines on your behalf and if the same airline gets the same requests from different OTAs, they can get confused if not annoyed.
No matter what kind of air ticket you have, you will need to make sure that you get to the airport on time, as you all will have some baggage which together will be a lot of baggage, so you will need to check them in early.
Ideally, you should reach the airport 3 hours before the flight departure time, as you will need to clear the security queues and immigration counters if you are flying overseas.
Technology and new options
Another option you have with group flights is that you can change the passenger details, 7 days before the flight date. So, this gives you some flexibility with the booking process but you will have to make some efforts if there are any cancellations.
When you book flights don't just look at the airfare, but everything else that is offered with it.
Nowadays some OTAs are offering the option of pay and hold i.e. you pay part of the payment at the time of the booking and the rest at a pre-decided time before the flight date, so if there are any cancellations or other changes of plans, you don't get into difficulties financially.
Final Thoughts
So, when you are after group air tickets, one of you will have to come forward and do all the dealing. You should know what you should do and what you shouldn’t to make the booking process as smooth as possible.
You must calculate the risks you may have to take and minimize their financial impact.
If you book flights separately for your group members it will take a lot of time, hence the need for group flights.
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