T A B L E_T A L K Iceland: one of the last great natural preserves on earth? Hip party spot? Discuss travel to this remote country in the Wanderlust area of Table Talk R E C E N T L Y Paris' cafe renaissance By David Downie There's a lively new scene in the City of Caffeine (09/21/98) The heart of a tourist hustler By Lisa Dreier Lonely in India, she befriended the local playboy. Who could know what would happen next? (09/18/98) In shackles with the Freedom Bag By Carol Lloyd The perfect luggage -- for a pygmy (09/17/98) Where am I gonna go today? By Aaron Paulson Finding a job overseas through the Internet (09/16/98) No man is a garden By Simon Firth Treasures of the English gardener's art -- and the spirit at its heart (09/15/98) Browse the Wanderlust Feature archives Wanderlust's Official Travel Book Partner		THE CHEAPEST AIR TICKET AROUND | PAGE 1, 2 - - - - - - - - - - The reason courier companies release seats at such low prices is because they need someone, almost anyone, to physically sit in the plane they're having their cargo loaded onto. Courier companies are in the freight business, and the freight they ship ranges from the mundane, such as legal documents, to the exotic, like a long pole. Most of the time couriers don't even know what it is they're accompanying, only that each bag can weigh up to 70 pounds (although I have heard about one courier who found out that the "freight" he was accompanying included bottles of champagne that Paul McCartney was sending from London to some fortunate soul in L.A.). According to the International Association of Air Travel Couriers, for a courier company, shipping something on a passenger plane as luggage is often cheaper and faster than sending it as air cargo. Luggage will be quickly loaded and unloaded along with the passengers, whereas shipments sent as straight cargo will commonly sit in customs for days before getting cleared. The possibility for illegal substances exists, but all freight is X-rayed before departure, and for the on-board couriers' protection, they are not allowed to touch the luggage. After years of shipping freight back and forth, the courier companies say that customs officials are well aware of the couriers' hands-off role. "The entire operation is aboveboard. A freelance courier just carries the paperwork -- a job that doesn't exactly require a Ph.D. in nuclear physics," states the Web site for the Air Courier Association. A U.S. Customs spokeswoman said she had never heard of a courier getting in trouble for something a company had shipped. To become a courier in the United States, most likely you'll have to fly out of one of five cities -- Los Angeles and San Francisco if you're interested in traveling to Asia, New York to Europe, Miami to South America and Chicago to both Asia and Europe. You can arrange a ticket either through a courier company directly, which Monaghan recommends, or pay a fee and go through an association, which also has its advantages: The ACA mails out the fares from the different courier companies to you and the IAATC posts them on its Web site twice a day and sends out two publications. Broadly speaking, there are two ways of arranging a courier ticket. You can specify where and when you want to go and see if anything is available, or you can ask what deals are currently being offered and choose one that appeals to you. Most of the time, couriers can get deals upwards of 50 percent off the regular ticket price. Some last-minute round-trip prices currently offered on the ACA Web site include Bangkok for $150, Madrid for $175 and Quito, Ecuador, for $170 (all fares from the U.S.). The secret is to know when to buy, and if what's being offered is a good deal. Monaghan recommends calling a few airlines prior to contacting the courier companies, so you're armed with how much an ordinary ticket costs. When I first called IBC about six weeks before I wanted to fly to Tokyo, it quoted me $400. Since a regular ticket was only a few hundred dollars more at that time of year (several years ago), I waited until two weeks prior to the departure date, when the $200 fare was being offered. "It's tricky because in a way, it's a take-it-or-leave-it proposition," says Monaghan. "There's not a huge amount of competition route to route, so if you want to go to Rio, for example, you may find just one company that goes there -- so you have to take what they have to offer." If you wait, you might get a better deal -- or you might get no deal at all. While the notion of taking off to Paris on a moment's notice is very romantic, Byron Lutz, editor of the IAATC's fare-related publications "The Shoestring Traveler" and the "Air Courier Bulletin," says that few people are really willing to pull themselves away on short notice from their daily grind. The IAATC and other companies often keep a list of people who say they are available to go at any time and yet, when they go down that list, few accept. "They say, 'Oh, man, $100 to London, I'd go any day but today.' Then we say then how about tomorrow? Then they say, 'Oh, any day but tomorrow.' They talk a good story but when it comes to jumping on the plane and going, it doesn't always happen." They may not have the time, but do you? SALON | Sept. 22, 1998