Become an Air Courier for Cheap Airfare
By Nick July 21, 2006
Besides searching online relentlessly and talking to travel agents, there is one other, *alternative* method of getting cheap airline tickets.
This alternative is becoming a courier. A courier, in the airline travel sense, is someone who is needed to transfer time sensitive documents to a country internationally. In exchange for delivering a bundle of documents to another country, the courier receives discounted airfares.
So how much do airline tickets cost as a courier?
This varies greatly. Usually it’s a pretty good discount.
Why do companies send documents through couriers?
Usually the documents that couriers carry are very time sensitive, and must be delivered immediately. It is a lot quicker for someone to take documents through customs at an airport than to have the documents go through customs as a shipment.
What are drawbacks of being a courier?
Usually couriers will have to give up one of their personal bags, since they will be required to take a bag of documents to deliver. So couriers may only have their carry one bag for their piece of luggage.
Another potential drawback is that you need to be flexible. As a traveler, not a tourist, it should not affect you too much. Your departure times and destination cities need to be fairly flexible.
Ok, so now that you have the basics, how do you become a courier?
There are online sites that advertise courier rates, and these are Courier.org, CourierList.com, CourierTravel.org, AirCourier.org. These sites require a membership, and in exchange they will provide you with courier deals.
I am a bit skeptical, because I found a negative review of AirCourier over at Amazon. Check out the review. It pretty much calls it a scam, so I would be careful signing up online.
The other way is to contact courier booking agencies. These agencies are usually located in major US airport cities, like Chicago, New York, and LA. It is a good idea to contact them a few months in advance, but even procrastinators can still get tickets.
For a list of Air Courier Booking agencies, check out the bottom of this article at websciences.org. It has a list of couriers in Denver, LA, Hong Kong, and Thailand.
As information became more accessible in the past ten years, it seems that more people heard about the deals in being an air courier. I think this could have greatly reduced the good deals available because of the supply/demand. So if you are still interested in becoming a courier, I would recommend going through a booking agency.
So, there is your unofficial guide to becoming an air courier, so now you might be able to travel no frills cheaply.
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Topics: Budget Airfare and Airlines |
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