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About Me: My grandparents were born in the Indian Territory / Oklahoma. My parents were born in Oklahoma, as was I, my wife, my children and my grandchildren. I was an irresponsbile teenager (it was the 60's, what can I say?) but managed to mature a little. I attend the University of Oklahoma and got a BA in History and went to work for a Fortune 500 company where I was unhappy. Eventually, I went back to OU for my MBA and PhD in MIS (ABD). I became a contract programmer because I programmed much better than I published. I also became a VAR for a firm selling accounting software written in a computer language called dBase that was designed for the Intel 8088 processor. I stayed firmly seated at the grindstone and in the first years of the new millenium I decided I needed a change. I figured that if I was ever going to to do all those things I said that I wanted to do, I'd better get going. In 2005 I sold my house and business and went to truck driving school. I now drive a Big Rig - mine - and I try not to work more than 6 months a year. I make an effort to spend at least 3 months a year outside of the U.S. I'm married. My wife and I have 6 kids and 9 grandchildren. Maybe that's why I like to travel so much.

Postscript: In December, 2010 I hung up my Driver's cap for good. The road had taken its' toll. I was no longer willing to drive 180 days a year, regardless of the money and the ability to work when I wanted. I had seen America. I was tired of being gone from home for 9 months a year. I needed a rest. In 2011 I sold my truck and trailer and was unemployed for the year. However, I wasn't inactive. I traveled overseas to Asia and South America for several months. In the fall I enrolled in an online course to to become certified in Oracle, the world's preeminent database. I want to go back to work sometime in the near future as a software developer or administrator. Even though I programmed for 20+ years, my skills are dated. Fortunately, I have a little flexibility as to my future.

RollingOkie OKC, Jan 1, 2012

Benchmarking Airfares

Benchmarking Airfare Pages: 1 2 3 4

How do I benchmark airfare? I have several ways. The first one I will discuss is farecompare.com. Airfare Cost - Where To Go So, what's the point of this picture? It's to show you where you need to go to start getting the best airfare. This is the Where-To-Go map at farecompare.com. This is where I start when I'm looking for airfare deals. When you get to the web site you then want to go to this section. Once there look for the Price Per Mile button. Clicking it produces a slider that you can move to change the cost per mile. The point is to get it lower. When you are lowering it you are finding the best airfare deals available. I also like the fact that the numbers that I see are the final numbers that I will be paying at the farecompare web site. All too often, other web sites tend to exclude many fees and taxes, making it difficult to compare airfares from and to various airports.

Airfare Cost - Cost Per Mile In this picture I have the cost per mile down to 15 cents. At 15 cents a mile, there are lots of places I can go. However, the very, very best cost per mile rates during the year seem to be down around 5 cents a mile. The problem is that you cannot get that airfare rate in the summer. Well, it's not likely you can get that ratein the summer. When I did this exercise in June of 2011, I could only get 4 destinations to pull up at 7 cents per mile. The point of doing this is to get your airfare down as low as possible. It's really good if you can know what that low cost should be. Here, we know that the best airfare price in the world at the time of the reasearch was 7 cents per mile.

Airfare Cost - Cost Per Mile

Now, you might say "Big deal. What's the difference between 5 and 7 cents a mile?" Well, it's 2 cents a mile or 40%, i.e., of your cost at 5 cents a mile. At 7 cents a mile, your airfare will be 40% higher when the cost goes up 2 cents a mile. I mean, "What's 40%? Right?" It's a lot in my book. Notice in the above example I clicked on the flag to Hanoi, Vietnam and it told me that the airfare was sold by American Airlines. I could then click on the Find Flights button and find the best flights for the month I was searching. Remember, you can change months. You can also change airports. Because I often fly out of DFW (Dallas), I can find more deals as Dallas is a much busier airport than OKC.

Airfare Cost - When To Go

I also like to use farecompare's When-to-Fly feature. With this feature I put in the two airports and then pick a date. The calendar then shows me the airfare for all the date in that month. You can go to the web site and try it by clicking in the first image on the left.

The two images here show substantial price differences between going to London from OKC in July and in January. january is absolutely one of the cheapest times of the year to go. Unfortunately, it's also one of the coldest. Airfare Cost - When To Go

As I change months, the costs change as well, letting me see a variety of fares. You can book most airlines 330 days out from the current date. It's really easy to find one of the internet's current best airfares at farecompare's web site.

I often start my search for airfare deals at farecompare's web site when I'm doing a random search for airfare, just to get a couple of becnhmarks.