How To Calculate The Hidden Costs Of Your Flight


by Johannes Stockburger - Date: 2010-01-23 - Word Count: 437 Share This!

If you want to compare offers for a travel project, you should consider not only the price tag of the air ticket, but also the hidden costs of your flight. This article gives you an overview of the most common costs apart from the ticket price. If you have a good travel agent, he will discuss these hidden costs of your flight with you. But if you use the booking engines in the internet, you may get a low priced fare, but miss out on the on the total cost.

Hidden expenses may be connected to
- luggage
- Change or cancellation penalty
- Expenses to reach the airport
-Money spent for a hotel room connected to early starting or late arriving flights
- The cost of your time spent on the road.

On top of these common expenses, some airlines charge a fee for a credit card payment or seat reservation. Mostly a fee for issuing the ticket is charged. This may or may not be included in the price tag of your ticket. If you do not consider the hidden costs of your flight carefully, you may pay much more for your journey than you should.

Leisure travelers often undervalue their time, because they are not paid for it. And family members, who drop their relatives at the airport and pick them again, do not charge for their time, either.
But nonetheless time is a resource of great value for everybody. Actually, if you feel that you do not have enough money, there are ways to get more. But for time, if it is gone, it's gone.
This is why many successful people put a higher value on time with their family, than on time spent with customers or clients.
If you want to get the most for your resources spent on travel, you really need to take care of your time, and the time of your family members. The value of time spent is part of the hidden costs of your flight. If you do not account for it, you may believe that you save, while you overpay.

I know very well that it can be a daunting task to calculate total costs of a flight, including the hidden ones. For this reason I included into the free membership area of MaxValue4Airfare.com a small script, that acts as a checklist for resources used to travel. While you fill the travel information into the form, it takes care of the math in the background, adding up the tickets price and the hidden costs of your flight. This way you get a meaningful price tag which you can use to compare all offers for your flight.

Related Tags: cheap airfare, value of time, hidden cost of flight

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