A work colleague of mine commented the other week that I obviously earn way too much money since I am always traveling and have done it in the higher classes (not much by AFF standards but a bit by normal person standards). I offered to explain to him how I do it and after about 2 minutes his response was "that sounds too much like work".
Has anyone successfully taught non FFers tips and tricks of flying on the cheap / getting into the higher classes? Or is it a journey which must be discovered by ones self?
I have passed on tips to some people who were beginners on this forum; now they are far from beginners, and some of them we now know quite well.
However, in general, I can tell people how I can do it, but they won't want to learn.
To be honest, this is not one of those "lifehack" article things - there's quite a few components to the whole idea. It's basically like learning a new hobby from scratch, like fixing old cars or fishing. If you can't keep engaged in it and dedicate time, you won't be interested to learn.
Some parts of this "hobby" require patience and can really suck; for example, dealing with call centres and checking ticketing statuses incessantly like a horrible overbearing mother-in-law (no offence to any mothers-in-law here). We won't even go into the super hack stuff like LM site scripting or loophole routings.
Some require a complete modification of patience and procedure thresholds; for example, finding a great fare but needing to tack on positioning flights, lengthening flight time.
And before any of you think everything we do to secure J or F seats takes trivial time, you have to be kidding. There is a marked time investment in most of what we want to do or find (e.g. searching for award seats). Even with the help of award search engines, subscription service alerts and the like, the patience required to persist with this effort to a goal must be built up through experience. People have to get used to the fact that some of these things have no easy straightforward method, no step-by-step instructions and nothing made easier by the airline(s) themselves, but this is what we do for experiences.
You can sometimes get more interest if you start with a dedicated example, e.g. link it to a travel goal they have, then go through the process of getting that goal with them.
I tell my parents and sister about these things, but of course since we are family, as long as I do it, they're happy to remain naive, particularly as they've benefited from my knowledge previously. That said, even after experiencing J and F, they have not lost their previous sense of "value" or comfort. For example, they are all happy to fly Y internationally on flights up to 8 hours or so.
Finally, we should all remember that just because they don't get it or don't want to get it, doesn't mean we don't like them or should hold them in a bad light or contempt.
