Most working professionals have to travel in some fashion on a regular basis. As musicians, we travel quite a bit, and often, for extended periods of time.
In the freelance world, when you have a professional engagement, the presenter or company usually pays for your lodging, travel, and airfare (up to a certain amount), gives you a stipend (also typically a set amount), or gives you a flat fee in addition to your performance fee that will cover travel and lodging. In many cases, you are able to book your own flight and save a little money if you know where to look.
Apart from professional engagements, you will often travel for auditions, or vacations in between gigs if you don’t want to go all the way home before your next engagement.
Finding affordable airfare is one of our biggest challenges as active performers and teachers. You want to take that audition, but perhaps it’s short notice, and the only flight you can find is $600-$700. Is it worth it? What if that flight were two to three hundred dollars cheaper. Worth it then? Maybe.
Here are a few of the things I have used to try and save money on travel and maximize every travel dollar spent.
Credit Cards
Hate them or love them, they can be a really smart idea and can help 
you build credit, which you’ll need as a freelance singer. Banks hate that self-employment status when it comes to loans for cars, homes, or other things. Good credit is essential. So, apart from getting the perks of the card and saving some money on travel, knowing how to make the most of your expanses is key. Here are a few of my favorite options for credit cards.
Airline Specific Cards:
Take your preferred airline or the airline that has a major hub in or near your city. If you’re in Atlanta, for example, it would be Delta. Chicago would be United etc. Get a card with that airline. They will typically have 3 tiers of cards that you can get. They offer everything from free checked bags to a yearly companion pass to upgraded status and lounge access. These often come with a fee as well, depending on the card you get, anywhere from $50 to $450. Every dollar you spend also becomes a mile, usually double miles or more if you buy airfare with that specific airline with your card.
These work best when you know you’ll be flying the same airline or can take that airline anywhere you’ll be going. Otherwise, you’ll end up with 4 or 5 of these airline specific cards with only a few thousand miles on each card. Those that swear by an airline specific card often say that even in places where their preferred airline doesn’t have a lot of options, the money they save during the year completely compensates for any slightly more expensive flights out of “non-hubs” for that airline.
Travel Cards
There are a number of these cards out there. I won’t even begin to try and summarize the options. I like this site for a good summary of a number of options. Here is my preferred option right now, but upon further investigation, this particular card is no longer available. I highly recommend something that works similarly to this, which is possible with a few of the options out there.
A quick summary of what I like about this type of card:
It lets me book with any airline, and I can redeem miles for a direct reimbursement off my bill for anything travel related. Taxis, trains, airfare, car rental etc. You have a certain window in which you can redeem those miles, but if you are traveling a lot, that won’t be a problem. You do get extra miles for certain things, but mostly, it’s a dollar for dollar point system, but the ability to redeem anywhere, with any airline right from your bill. So, say I paid for a 300 dollar flight with this card, and have 30,000 points saved up. I can redeem those points and wipe out $300 on my credit card. Again, the only limitations are that your travel expenses have a limit on how long they are “redeemable.” But if you travel fairly frequently, you’ll never run in to a problem.
What are your favorite cards for earning travel benefits?
Best Place to Book Flights
There are a number of great places to book flights. Typically, you’ll find the highest prices with airlines directly, but occasionally they have sales. Last year, I found a round trip flight to Scotland from Nashville for just over $700 round trip, direct flight, with Delta.
Budget Airlines
Spirit, Frontier and Southwest are examples of budget airlines. Last year, I found a round-trip flight on Frontier to Orlando from Nashville, for $69 dollars. Hard to beat that.
The biggest trade-offs with budget airlines are that you get zero perks. There is no reserved seating (in many cases), and no freebies in flight such as food or wifi. In addition, everything costs. Checked bags, carry-on bags, and sometimes a personal items as well. We happened to get a free personal item on this Frontier flight, so we packed everything we needed in a backpack for the week and just put that under our seats. There are a number of international budget airlines as well with a similar setup, so if you travel with a lot of luggage, after fees, you may end up paying the price of a basic economy ticket on a bigger airline.
What are your favorite budget airlines? Why?
Travel Websites:
Skiplagged: This is one of my favorite websites for finding fantastic
deals. The short story is that you book a flight that continues on to another destination, but get off at the first destination. The website helps you find all the options, and predicts the lowest prices and times to fly. The only catch is that you usually have to fly with only a carry-on, since if you check baggage, it will continue on to your final destination. This is a great place to find fares for auditions or interviews, and if you are used to traveling light, it works great for long gigs was well.
Skyscanner: This website is more for determining the cheapest time to fly during the year. It’s helpful to narrow down your ideal travel dates and get a sense of when it might be cheapest to travel. In the same way many other websites like Kayak and Skiplagged do, you can also set fare alerts, so that they will email you when the price drops or raises.
Airfare Watchdog:This is another good place to check for deals. It’s not quite as streamlined as Skyscanner or Skiplaagged in my opinion, but they do a great job of rounding up deals.
Those are my favorites, but here is a list of other places to check. You never know where you’ll find a good deal as not every website lists every airline or deal. Websites like Kayak, for example, won’t show Southwest fares, as they don’t allow their fares to be posted on sites such as these.
Places to check for deals
- Google Flights
- Jet Radar
- Air Wanderer
- ChepoAir
- Kiwi.com
- Momondo
- Scott’s Cheap Flights
- Thrifty Nomads
- Secret Flying
Mistake Fares
Occasionally there will be an error in a fare that is posted. These are often due to computer glitches or human error. Though these are great deals, they can be a little risky. For example, sometimes the airline will simply cancel the fare and in that case you’ll be reimbursed, but would have to re-book at the corrected price, or lose the flight all together if you didn’t’ want to pay that new higher fare.
In this case, it’s best to wait for up to 2 weeks until you’re sure the fare won’t be cancelled before booking things that are not refundable like a hotel or other transportation etc. The airlines tend to avoid cancelled fares as they doesn’t instill buyer confidence, but they can still cancel them regardless, and leave you stranded or in a position where you’ll have to pay a whole lot more for a ticket if your trip is close.
One can benefit most from these fares when your travel dates and destinations are flexible, which is almost never the case for singers. Worth a check.
Those of you that have found mistake fares, where do you find them? What are your favorite places to look for them? Advice for those interested in mistake fares?
Ok, now it’s time to get in to a little airline myth and lore. Here arae some of the suggested things to try to find the lowest fares. I’ve tried most of these and have found some success.
Booking on Tuesday
This is true, often airlines put out their 
sales on Tuesdays and you can find great rates. Some even suggest that 3pm on Tuesday is the best time to book/search. Others dispute this, but I have overwhelmingly found the lowest fares from 3pm-4pm on Tuesdays, so I’m a believer!
Searching too much Have you ever been searching for lights for a a few days or hours and found that all of the sudden the fares seem randomly higher? You might not be imagining that. Often, websites use cookies to track you and your searches, and might raise the prices when you frequently search for your dates and destination. How do you avoic this? Use private browsing. Make sure you open a private browsing window to avoid this kind of tracking. There is research to suggest that this doesn’t not happen, but many say in their experience, the more they search for the same or similar flight dates and destinations, they do seek those prices go up seemingly arbitrarily.
Want to go full James Bond? Use a VPN (Virtual Private Network) to surf the web, then you can be sure nobody is tracking you. The Opera browser has one built in for free. It’s a little clunky, but works well enough to tell the computer you’re in Romania (for example) but happen to be searching for flights from Texas to New York. I skeptically tested this and the prices are indeed lower when you’re not searching form the U.S. and when you are not racking up tons of visits to a website that’s tracking you. right now, my favorite VPN app is Tunnel Bear. It’s user friendly and affordable. I actually use it when I’m overseas to access some U.S. websites that look and function differently when out of the country.
What are other ways they change the prices? One study showed that on Orbitz, those surfing on a Mac, were shown higher prices than those on a PC. Go figure.
Lastly, there is some evidence to suggest that you have access to lower fares when logged in , but most of this data is coming from hotel websites as opposed to flights. However, it might be worth logging in, even under a guest account, to see if you get access to lower prices.
Other suggested techniques for finding low fares
- Check nearby airports
- Check one-way tickets separately instead of roundtrip
- If you need a hotel or car, check bundle deals
- Try to fly one leg of your trip on a Tuesday, Wednesday or Saturday.
- If you find a great fare, grab it quickly
- Check social media for deals
- Sign up for fare alerts
- Book 3-7 weeks out if possible
Bottom Line
There are a number of ways to save money on flights, but you’ll have to be creative and spend some time looking to find the deals that make the most sense for your needs. Booking ahead of time is always good and you’ll quickly find the places that have the most promising leads and the ones that look good, but never pan out and end up wasting your time.
