In case you were living under a rock (or just not checking travel blogs), you might have missed yesterday’s MEGA fare sale.  Through a confluence of promotions, I saw transatlantic BUSINESS CLASS flights for as low as $266 out of pocket.  You also had to pay 30K Avios, but you would earn those all back plus more on the flight.

British Airways is still offering a business class sale through today (Friday the 16th) but every flight I’m looking at is pricing out at $1900 before discounts, which means it’s still going to be $800 or so out of pocket after the AARP and Pay with Avios discounts.  Still a good deal, but not a SCREAMING good deal.

I have written about this before, but there’s a few things that you can do to help prepare yourself for these kinds of deals

(SEE ALSO: 4 reasons why you’ll miss out on the next mistake fare)

(SEE ALSO: 5 steps to get you ready for the next mistake fare sale!)

#1: Follow the right people

One reason you might have missed out on this deal is that you didn’t hear about it in time.  These types of super great deals go REALLY FAST.  Of course you can (and should!) follow me on Twitter and Facebook, as well as sign up for my once-daily emails to stay up on the latest travel news, I don’t always concentrate on mistake fares – there are others who are usually faster than me.  A few people that often have these types of deals early

• @TheFlightDeal on Twitter
• Frequent Miler (especially signing up for the Quick Deals)
• View from the Wing
• Travel is Free

#2: Know where you want to go and when you can

This is super important for those of us with families.  You need to know WHEN you can go – when are those teacher holidays.  When is Spring or Christmas break.  When is band or Scout camp that you can’t miss.  If you wait until the fare deal comes out before you start trying to find out that information, you very well may miss it

Same thing goes for where you want to go.  Don’t book a place you don’t want to go just because it’s a “good deal”.  Know what “your price” is and what you’re willing to pay

#3: Book first, ask questions later

Most airlines (including British Airways) allow either a hold or a 24 hour cancellation period.  So if you see a great deal, book it now.  Even the deal I posted last night for $266 out of pocket (About 7:10pm) was gone 20-30 minutes later

In the end, we did not pull the trigger on this deal.  Even the $266 out of pocket was a bit too much for us (yes, I realize how ridiculous that sounds).  But I knew we couldn’t go with just my wife and I (we just got back from Europe).  So we weren’t just looking at $266, we were looking at:

• $266 * 8 = over $2000
• 6 passports (currently only my wife and I have them)
• Global Entry fees for the kids (if we wanted to do that)
• Getting to the gateway city and back (in this case Baltimore) – I did find some deals from Cincinnati but it wasn’t one of the cities where you got the big bonus for paying with Avios
• Plus the regular costs of hotels and food and such for however long we were there

On Twitter, earlier in the afternoon there were reports that Young Adult and Child fares were showing up with a $0 fare and the $400 AARP / ticket was still being taken off – I saw a screenshot of someone with 1 adult, 1 youth and 1 child fare for a total of ~$150 out of pocket!  I WOULD have jumped on that but could not reproduce that

So – if you missed out on yesterday’s sale, there you have some steps to get you ready for next time.  If you booked something, let me know in the comments what you booked – I’d love to hear where you’re going!