The other night my wife and I hosted a get-together for missionary friends who are home on furlough. This family was passing through town and wanted to visit with their contacts in the area, so we invited them to our home. One of the friends who came was a retired missionary who still actively represents his mission through short term trips.

We got to discussing flights for missionaries, and I asked him who handles his missionary airfare arrangements. “Oh, I just find an Internet site and book it myself,” he replied.

“Are you aware that there are discounts available for international missionary and humanitarian travel,” I asked. You should have seen the look on his face when he realized that for years now he had needlessly been paying full airfare for his international mission trips.

“I had no idea,” he replied.

Before leaving, he thanked my several times for giving him the tip. This veteran global traveler is like many others who have bought into myths about booking missionary airfare. Their assumptions and lack of information are costing them not only money but also time and other resources. Here are three myths that I hear frequently as I interact with missionaries and mission trip leaders.

Myth #1: It doesn’t matter where you buy your airline ticket; the prices are all the same.

Between the proliferation of Internet travel sites and aggressive airline advertising campaigns aimed at driving you to their websites, it would seem that the simplest thing is to just book missionary travel online yourself. Or if you know a guy who has a friend who works at a travel agency across town, why not just call there? Does it really make a difference?

Early in my 20+ years of international ministry travel I discovered that airfare can vary greatly and that who you buy from really does make a difference. I discovered that the “secret” to getting discounted fares is knowing the difference between published fares—what you get from airlines and the Internet sites—and contract fares offered by select travel agencies.

I learned this as a young pastor taking a group from my church to serve for a week in Germany. I called the local office of a travel agency “chain” and was given one price on a particular airline, which was the same as what the airline gave me. I contacted another travel agency that I had heard about and got the same flights on the same airline for a couple hundred dollars less per person. The difference was that the second travel agency had contract fares, which are special arrangements with the airlines to sell a certain number of seats at a discounted price.

Today, most major airlines offer missionary or humanitarian contract rates for sale through a select few travel agencies. By utilizing these rates, it is not uncommon to save several hundred dollars off from each ticket. Africa is especially discounted, but savings are available to other continents as well. So it pays to know who to contact, because you can’t get these discounts from just any travel agent or even from the airlines.

Myth #2: You get the same service (or lack of it) regardless of where you book.

Although we live in a business culture that talks much about customer service, most of us who fly regularly don’t see a lot of that when dealing with airlines. Sometimes it feels like you have been dropped onto a deserted island and left to fend for yourself. When you call an airline, their job is to get your issue resolved as fast as possible so that they can tackle the 10 calls queued up behind you.

A good missionary travel consultant will explore a variety of options that not only help the bottom line, but actually make travel easier. There has been many times where my travel counselor came up with better schedules, found innovative ways to save money or suggested ways to avoid a “forced” overnight stay in a city.

Internet sites, of course, don’t provide personal interactions and there are no experts to review the travel arrangements with you. There’s no one to help catch mistakes that you might make. I know a short term mission team leader who typed in the wrong travel dates while booking online an entire team’s international flights. He didn’t realize it until hours after he had hit the “submit” button and purchased the tickets. His mistake was difficult to fix and cost him many hours and a lot of money!

Myth #3: If there is a problem, the airline will take care of me.

Who would have ever imagined that a volcano with an unpronounceable name way up in Iceland would spew ash all over Europe and shut down air travel for days on end? Yet that is exactly what we saw last year. This year, a volcano in Chile is wreaking havoc in the skies over Australia. You never think about flight attendants, pilots, air traffic controllers or even passport control officers walking off the job and airline schedules being sent into disarray, but we have seen all of this in recent days. Then there are the frequent problems like mechanical malfunctions and weather delays that can leave you grounded. You need someone on your side who will look out for your and explore all options, and you just don’t get that from the airlines.

Having traveled to 26 countries across six continents myself, and managed teams working in dozens of additional countries, I have seen international travel counselors come to our rescue on many occasions. If you are stuck in the middle of Timbuktu, it is nice to know there is someone you can call on who can get you out!

With airfare accounting for half or more of most short term mission trip expenses, and knowing that a bad travel experience can really dampen an otherwise great trip, I’ve found that it is best to leave air arrangements to people who know what they are doing. While missionary travel specialists can’t control volcanoes or airline strikes, they sure can come to the rescue when those or a hundred other things happen. That’s good news for all of us who travel abroad to serve.

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Frank Banfill is president of MaxPoint Ministries (www.maxpoint.org). He regularly leads short term mission teams and assists other ministries with their international outreaches. He writes on behalf of Ministry Travel (www.ministrytravel.com).