I just discovered an amazing travel hack for flying with kids! I had never heard of any airline that had a kids fly free program until just a few days ago. It’s kind of blowing my mind, actually.
My son Jack recently turned two, and as any traveling parent knows, that means the end of free plane rides.
Or does it?
While recently planning a trip to spend time with family, I was desperately trying to find roundtrip flights under $500. But it was basically impossible unless we wanted to reserve redeye flights.
With a toddler.
No thanks.
Traveling clear across the country is expensive! We have family in Vancouver, Washington and Birmingham, Alabama. So it’s not exactly a hop, skip, and a jump!
We were used to paying $400 per ticket, but that was when we only had to buy two of them. Just thinking about spending $1,500 on airfare was painful. (We pulled off an all-inclusive, 10-day road trip for only $1,289.13 for goodness sake!)
Southwest Airlines was our old standby, but their pricing seemed to go sky high recently (cheesy pun intended), and their cheaper flight times were terrible. Maybe it was just a busy time of year, but it was pretty discouraging!
Kids Fly Free Travel Hack!
Just when I felt like giving up, I checked out the Frontier Airlines website. Turns out, when you become a Discount Den member (at the cost of $59.99 per year), children ages 14 and under can fly free on certain days!
I was so surprised! It seemed too good to be true, especially considering the fact that their tickets were already much cheaper than every other airline I had checked.
When you become Discount Den member, the Kids Fly Free offer is available with the purchase of an adult ticket.
You have to choose from a limited selection of Kids Fly Free travel days, which means that you might have to be flexible with your dates.
You can read all of the details on their website.
Even with paying extra for carry-on and checked luggage, Frontier’s airfare was still cheaper than every other airline I looked into!
Also, I should mention that we only ended up booking a one-way flight with Frontier (Birmingham to Portland) because the length of the return flights (Portland to Birmingham) were over 14 hours long.
With a toddler?
Again, no thanks.
A more expensive flight from American Airlines had to suffice for the trip home.
Cost Breakdown
If you’re wondering about the cost breakdown, here it is:
$131.00 — Benj’s Fare
$131.00 — Lauren’s Fare
$ 00.00 — Jack’s Fare
$ 59.99 — Discount Den Annual Membership Fee
$123.00 — ThePerks Bundle X 3 (includes a carry-on bag, a checked bag, seat selection, and priority boarding for each of us)
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$444.99 — Grand Total
That averages out to just $148.33 per person! Sweet.
I hope this simple travel hack helps some of you. Flying as a family can be hugely expensive, so you can save a lot of money if your kids fly free!
Have you ever flown with Frontier Airlines, and how was your experience?
