Today, I reveal the secret.
The truth about Last Minute Flight Ticket System in Korea..
There isn’t one.
There, I said it. And yes, I’m serious.
Then, how do I know their dirty little secret?
It goes way back, like two weeks. My friend Katie Tibbetts and I decided to go on a trip during our long weekend. We both were and are having some difficult time at this stage of lives, we needed some fresh breeze. The question.. where to?
“Have you ever done just go to the airport and grab the last minute flight?”
“No, have you?”
“Me neither. You want to?”
“Hell, yeah!”
Just like that, Friday night, we met at Incheon International Airport with our backpack, sleeping bag, running shoes and obviously- Passport. Just the simple act ‘Going to the airport’ makes me really happy. Destination: Unknown, but I knew I will go to some place. I remember how happy I was just sitting in the airport with my bag, writing email with my Mac.
And Tibbetts arrived..
Where to? We were looking at the flight schedules. So many exciting places! Flight leaves the night we were there to…
LA, Dubai, Cebu, Manila, KL, Taipei….
Well, LA and Dubai might be too much for our 4 days trip, so we’ve decided to go for either Cebu or Manila. Here’s our conversation to check out counter lady:
“Do you have any last minute flight? We would like to buy them.”
“What? You can buy tickets but it will be really expensive.”
“Why? Isn’t that a left over? Don’t you do sale to fill the seat?”
“I don’t know what you mean but you can buy tickets but it will be really expensive. Would you like to buy them?”
“How much?”
“More than 750,000 won (USD 750) for Cebu.”
“Oh, nooooo…..”
We did the identical conversation over and over again with Manila, KL, and other possible destinations. And thought, this is weird, why nobody understood the term ‘last minute flight’? At that moment, we found a group of flight attendances of Air Asia Airline. They probably should know, right? But reaction we got was just about the same as others. Apparently it doesn’t exist in Asia or at least Korea, I started to think.
We were wandering.. more than before. Just walk back and forth of this beautiful airport. Information centre was closed, and a lot of airline offices were empty. Well, it was after 9pm, so good for them. Someone who’s more directly involved with airline- that was the person we were looking for, and we found one!
M.Cem Yazici from Turkish Airlines was kind enough to deal with our spontaneous plans. He confirmed our theory. He said there’s no last minute ticket policy anywhere in Korea. He said they don’t do it. Logically, I didn’t and still don’t understand why though. Isn’t it better to sell left over tickets cheap rather than fly with empty seats? Same fuel and same flight! Even if the ticket sells as ‘last minute’ but it doesn’t mean that person who buy won’t go through security or anything. If they are concerning about terror related matters, I don’t think terrorists would buy last minute tickets!
While everyone we talked to gave us ‘crazy girls’ eyes, he was up for our spontaneous plan. He even gave us many other choices to try in the morning. I didn’t know Guam was so close!
Consequently, our plan didn’t go through as we thought but we’ve learned a valuable lesson. Don’t ever try spur of the moment trip starts at the airport in Korea. Do one with wheels, not wings.
So.. what did we do after? Regardless, we had an amazing weekend. Not overseas but we traveled with wheels and traveled through west coast of Korea. Check out my latest Video post about our camping trip and Flickr album: Runaway Duo Part 1. More update… coming soon.
Have you ever done this kind of trip? Spur of the moment, grab flights to unknown destination. If you did, please share with me!
