Allegiant Airlines: Making Family Vacations Budget Friendly!

If you’ve followed Simply Real Moms for a bit now, you may already know that my family is strewn about the US. My parents and a few siblings are in the upper Midwest, another sibling in Las Vegas, my in laws in Idaho and Washington, and our extended families are on the East side of the country and up into Canada.

We travel. A lot.

My boys are seasoned travelers at just 4 years old and 8 months old. They’ve driven, flown, taken the train and even been on boats, but our favorite mode of transportation is flying. We love us some airplanes! Downside is that once you have kids, your travel expenses go up considerably! Extra food, lodging, attraction fees and buying more seats on a plane mean our trip budgets have doubled what they were when it was just my husband and I.

Lucky for us, we have Allegiant Airlines. Seriously, if it weren’t for them we wouldn’t be able to travel by plane as a family! Allegiant’s ticket prices beat their competitors out of the water, and I’m here to tell you all about them and why we love traveling with them!

Booking a flight with Allegiant is so easy and one of my favorite websites to book travel on. When you choose your departure and destination cities and plug in your desired dates, they not olny show you the prices for those specific dates, but you can check out the pricing for the dates all around those days! I LOVE this feature because while their prices are so affordable, I can sometimes score a major deal just by changing my dates!

TRAVEL TIP:
When booking your travel through Allegiant, save a little money by paying for your luggage then, rather than at the airport. It costs more to check your bags AT the airport through them, so save by booking your bags too! If you have a serious preference on your seating arrangements (if you have a minor flying with you, they will always seat you together) you can also pay a little extra to pick you seats early. Otherwise, you can pick at check in.

I recently took both my boys on a trip to Mesa, AZ. I was taking my older son to see the sights of Mesa and my younger son was coming along to stay with his grandma (who so amazingly flew in to help out!) because I’m not quite ready to leave him. Our flight was taking us from Oakland International Airport straight to Mesa Gateway airport, and I was flying (GASP) alone!!

I had a lot of anxiety about flying with both boys alone for the first time, but it was all for nothing.

Checking in for our flight at the ticket counter at both airports was a breeze. There was only one person in line at Oakland (thanks to their limited schedule, there aren’t 40 flights leaving within an hour…I find that a huge plus!), and we checked our bags, car seats and travel crib with ease and we were on our way.

Now, my only big grievance with Allegiant is that unlike other airlines, they do not allow pre-boarding for families with small children. If I’m flying with my kids’ carseats (I didn’t this time due to lack of free hands) I am usually humiliated when walking down the aisle of the semi-boarded plane with a giant car seat, apologizing to those already seated as I clonk them on the head. This time, my older son was tall enough to fly without his car seat, and baby was on my lap so waiting wasn’t an issue.

The flight attendants on both flights were so wonderful to the kids, and their warm smiles were assuring to this probably very frazzled looking mama. They helped me get my carry-on into the upper compartment, helped guide my son to the correct seats when he was in front of me, and they even let him into the cockpit to meet the pilot and see all the knobs and buttons! My fellow passengers were wonderful and helped us as well! Leave it up to the kindness of strangers and flight attendants to make things easier.

I loved flying into Mesa Airport rather than the much larger close by Phoenix airport because we were off the plane and had all of our luggage on a cart within minutes. Allegiant flies into a lot of smaller airporst, making things a little less chaotic, especially when you’ve got the kids in tow.

Traveling with your family can be expensive, but lower prices and easier travel make Allegiant my go-to for flights for my family. We have flown with them a few times, and they even fly into some of the more obscure airports (one of which my parents live near and it’s usually VERY expensive to fly into that airport!), making travel possible for so many more families all over the country!

Book your travel today:
ONLINE
FACEBOOK
TWITTER
INSTAGRAM

*I was given airfare for me and one guest as part of an Allegiant Blogger tour to Mesa, AZ. All opinions are my own.