Complete Jetsetter Alerts Tutorial - Understanding Alerts

Tutorial Overview

• Date Ranges - How to interpret the dates we give you in an alert.

In each alert, there will be several items related to the destination the alert is for. Two things that will always be in every email are:

• A box containing all the departure airports available for the deal.
• A corresponding alert card for each airport, containing all the information you need to locate and book flights departing from that airport.
• Searching for Flights - Learn where to search for flights and the difference between a Flight Aggregator and an OTA (Online Travel Agency).
• Locating Dates @ Alerted Price - We show you how to find all the available dates at the alerted price.
• Multiple Airlines Included in Alert - Understand why you're not seeing a particular airline at the alerted price and learn how to find the dates when your preferred airline has the alerted price available.
• Stopover Options - Learn about stopover options and what it means when you see one included in an alert.
• Booking Tools Options - Explaining recommended websites to search for flights and other travel needs.

The alert card for Pittsburgh is shown below. In a real alert, you would also see alert cards for the other two departing airports mentioned, but to keep things simple, let's focus on the one below.

Date Range

Let's start with Date Range: Aug-Dec 2023
Translation = The alerted price can be found on one or more dates in each of the following months: August, September, October, November, and December of 2023.

If it said Oct, Dec 2024; Jan-Feb, May 2025
Translation = You can find the alerted price on one or more dates for the months of October and December of 2024, as well as January, February, and May of 2025.

Search & Find Flights

We will always include one linked example of the deal on the alert card, as shown. This allows you to quickly click and view the deal live on whichever website we decided to link to (usually Google Flights). While the linked example is helpful, there are tons of date combination options for you to take advantage of the deal. But how do you find them?

What Is A flight Aggregator?

• What Google and Yahoo are for searching information across billions of websites, flight aggregators are for finding prices for flights (and hotels) across all the websites where you can book them. They allow you to compare prices quickly and efficiently. Examples of popular flight aggregators include Google Flights, Skyscanner, WayAway, Kiwi, and Kayak.

What Is An Online Travel Agency (OTA)?

An OTA (Online Travel Agency) is a company that acts as a middleman, allowing you to book flights, hotels, car rentals, and other travel-related services. Instead of booking directly with an airline, hotel, or rental company, you use these agencies as intermediaries. Examples of OTAs include Expedia, Orbitz, Priceline, and Booking.com.

The days of endlessly searching multiple websites to compare prices are long gone. A flight aggregator or search engine simplifies this process by scanning hundreds of OTAs for the best available prices without you having to visit each site individually. This way, you can quickly and easily find the best deals in minutes, instead of spending days or weeks searching.

Which Flight Aggregator Is The Best?

Google Flights is the best tool for quickly and easily locating the cheapest dates throughout the entire calendar year. Thanks to their superior budget and technology, you can simply click on the departure calendar and instantly see the cheapest days to depart and return—without even having to run a search.

Other aggregators try to provide similar results, but they don’t perform nearly as well. Due to budget limitations (it costs money to update prices using an API to pull real-time data), they only refresh prices when someone else has already searched for the same dates you’re looking at.

By using Google Flights alongside our alert information, you can quickly and efficiently find all the available dates at the alerted price. We typically link directly to Google Flights in each alert card. If, for some reason, it's not Google Flights, you can always take the information from the alert card and use it to find the best dates for you on Google Flights.

Airline Options

Many times, you’ll find that more than one airline is available at the alerted price for a particular departure airport in an alert. However, after clicking on "View this Deal Online" from the alert card, you might only see one airline at the alerted price, with others showing much higher fares.

Did the price change?

It’s possible, but more often than not, the price hasn’t changed. The reason you’re not seeing that price for all airlines mentioned is that, while each airline may have the alerted price available, they are not always available on the same date.

Take a look at the screenshot of the Google Flights search below to see this in action.

As you can see, American Airlines is showing at the alerted price, while United Airlines is displaying $334. This simply means that United is not available at the alerted price on the pre-selected dates. To locate the dates where United offers the alerted price, the best way is to use Google Flights.

From there, you can easily adjust the dates by clicking on the departure date, and a calendar with all the prices will pop up, allowing you to quickly find the available dates, as shown below.

The first prices you see are the cheapest departure prices available for that date. Once you select one, it will then show you the cheapest price for your entire trip based on the return date you choose.

However, you don't have to click through all the dates showing the alerted price to find when United is available at the alerted price. You can simply use the airline filter as demonstrated below.

Airline Filters

We selected United Only, and now if you look at the prices for each day and compare this photo with the previous one, you'll notice that the prices on some of the dates have changed. This allows us to easily see—without needing to do any further searching—which dates are available to book with United at the alerted price.

Now, in the photo below you can see that United is showing the alerted price of $282.

Airline Filter Warning

One thing to be mindful of is that many airlines sell and book flights for each other through what is known as "Codeshare" or Partner Operated flights. If you select a specific airline in the filter and suddenly the flights disappear or the price is no longer close to the alerted price, this is usually the cause. The easy fix is to select the Airline Alliance instead, and the flight options will reappear.

Stopover Programs

An airline stopover program allows travelers to turn a layover into a second vacation destination at no additional airfare cost. Some airlines even cover a few nights in a hotel, but most don't, leaving you responsible for the rest of the expenses. The idea is that you get to stamp your passport and explore a new country without spending a penny on extra airfare.

This is one of our favorite travel hacks, and something we love to do often. Some of the airlines offering stopover programs include:

• Icelandair
  • Destination: Reykjavik, Iceland
  • Stopover Duration: 1 to 7 nights
• Iberia
  • Destination: Madrid, Spain
  • Stopover Duration: 1 to 6 nights
• TAP Air Portugal
  • Destination: Lisbon or Porto, Portugal
  • Stopover Duration: Up to 5 days
• PLAY Airlines
  • Destination: Reykjavik, Iceland
  • Stopover Duration: Up to 10 days
• Air Canada
  • Destination: Toronto, Montreal, and other major Canadian cities
  • Stopover Duration: Up to 7 days
• SWISS
  • Destination: Zurich, Switzerland
  • Stopover Duration: 1 to 4 nights
• Copa Airlines
  • Destination: Panama City, Panama
  • Stopover Duration: 24 hours to 7 days
• Finnair
  • Destination: Helsinki, Finland
  • Stopover Duration: Up to 5 days

However, you don’t need to remember which airlines offer a stopover program every time you receive an alert. When an airline mentioned in the alert has a stopover option, it will be clearly indicated on the alert card, as shown below.

The key point to remember for stopover options is that you must book it during your initial booking, and it must be done directly through the airline offering the stopover.

Once you've selected your departure and return dates on Google Flights, you’ll be presented with several booking options. The first option will always be with the airline directly, followed by a list of third-party options such as Expedia, Priceline, and others, commonly referred to as Online Travel Agencies.

Booking Tools

Flights

We will always link to one of the following flight aggregators: Google Flights, Skyscanner, WayAway, and Kiwi.

Regardless of which flight search engine or aggregator we link to in the alert card, always take the alert information to Google Flights to gather a full list of dates available at the alerted price. Once you’re familiar with using Google Flights, you’ll be able to collect a complete list of all the date options for you and your travel party in minutes, whereas other platforms can take considerably longer.

So why do we even use other aggregators? Because not all aggregators are able to pull the same flight data from every possible website at any given time. It’s similar to why you see different search results on Yahoo than you do on Google—each platform has access to different data, and that's why we provide multiple options.

Tours & Attractions

In our alerts, you sometimes will see a card that looks like this:

Things To Do In Kailua-Kona

View the top things to see and do in Kailua-Kona on GetYourGuide.com, the leading website where local tour and activity advertise, and you are able to purchase and plan you trip in advance with the ability to cancel anything you book with 24 hours notice prior to the scheduled start date.

View Activities

We've partnered with GetYourGuide.com, an industry leader that offers tours, activities, transfers/shuttles, and tickets to local attractions in 10,000 cities across 180 countries worldwide.

This partnership allows our members to pre-book all their desired vacation activities at the lowest prices, and—our favorite reason—you'll never need to pull out your credit or debit card while on vacation. This means no risk of compromising your cards at the worst possible time, with no chance of getting a replacement until you're back home. (Been there, it's not fun!)

Another reason we chose to partner with GetYourGuide.com is their policy to let you Cancel Anything you book on their site until 1 day before your scheduled activity. This means you can secure all your passes in advance, saving tons of time while avoiding the hassle of trying to arrange everything last minute—while on vacation. If you're like us, you value the flexibility to change your plans without it costing you a penny, and that's exactly what GetYourGuide.com delivers.

Accommodations

We’ve teamed up with Booking.com and Hostelworld, two industry leaders in the travel space. We chose Booking.com for its impressive 28 million listings and the flexibility of paying upon arrival at many properties. While this option isn’t available everywhere, they make it easy by providing a filter to show properties where you can pay on arrival. This is a big advantage for those who want to lock in a reservation while allowing more time to gather the necessary funds, rather than paying upfront.

Hostelworld, as the name suggests, is the top platform for booking hostels, catering specifically to travelers who enjoy meeting like-minded adventurers. It's a favorite among backpackers and social travelers who thrive on connections while exploring the world.

If you don’t see a card like the one below, you can always find a link titled “Booking Tools” at the bottom of every alert. Use that to access these travel resources and start planning your next adventure.

Search For Accommodations

Discover the best places to stay in Dublin, and search for rates and availability

View Accomodations

This concludes our tutorial! You're now ready to conquer your bucket list, and turn your dream trips into memories instead of remaining just a dream!