Cheap Way to See the World : Couriers Draw Pay in Form of Discounted Air Fares

Need a cheap ticket to Rio?

Are you willing to dress well for the trip, shun alcohol on the flight and do a little light delivery work?

If so, you may be ready for a fast-paced career as an overseas air courier.

For up to 70% off the cost of a regular airline ticket, couriers shuttle business documents and small parcels from the United States to foreign lands and back. It’s all perfectly legal.

For example, flying to Rio de Janiero on a commercial flight from Boston costs more than $1,000. But Now Voyager, a New York air courier booking agent, had an Election Day flight for $150 round trip from New York. The round-trip cost of a shuttle flight to New York from Boston would add $198.

“Being a courier is very simple,” said air courier guru Kenneth Clarke, who has taken about 20 international flights as a courier and writes a monthly newsletter on the subject. “You don’t have to do anything. You just have to be there.”

Clarke, 36, an Australian who has lived in New York City for 13 years, said he was working as a ground courier 4 years ago when “somebody told me it was possible to fly back on the Concorde for 250 bucks. Two weeks later I was in London and I did it.”

About 20 courier companies, most based in New York and Los Angeles, are battling in what has developed in the last 5 years into a highly competitive business.

“When this industry started if you could offer 3-day service, (companies) just about knelt down and kissed your feet,” said Toni Carpenter, overseas director of IBC Pacific, a Los Angeles courier company. “Next year, I’m expecting them to demand yesterday service.”

Surge at Start of ‘80s

Couriering began in the mid-1970s, but the need for speedy international business deliveries to New York, London, Hong Kong, Milan or Paris didn’t surge until the beginning of this decade. Many companies in the past either hired private couriers or sent their own employees--more expensive and time-consuming than using “civilian” couriers, who pay to fly rather than getting paid.

“Getting things on someone’s desk by 10 o’clock tomorrow morning became very important in business,” said Michelle Rosen of Now Voyager in New York. “If you ship something by freight it can take as long as 72 hours to clear customs and is consigned to a freight terminal.”

Banks, stock brokerage houses, insurance companies, film studios--all use air couriers regularly, typically shipping bundles of documents and bulky materials. Under a signed contract, couriers aren’t responsible for the contents of their packages and typically don’t even touch them.

Couriers normally pay a fee to a service--Now Voyager charges $45--and then say when and where they want to travel, booking up to 3 months in advance for regular, scheduled departures and return trips on commercial airlines.

Payment is the bargain ticket, usually 30% to 70% off regular fares.

Couriers travel to the airport with the courier company, which checks the baggage and hands over the baggage claim receipts and, on international flights, a manifest listing contents.

The courier meets another agent at the destination, and either hands over the receipts or brings the material--packed in canvas bags bearing the courier company logo--through customs and is free to go until the return, also usually a courier trip.

So what’s the catch?

No Drinking Allowed

Couriers are permitted only a carry-on bag. Drinking alcohol is not permitted on board, and couriers have to dress well. And they have to be flexible in terms of booking; most couriers are “free-lance whatevers,” self-employed, retired, teachers or students--but it’s not impossible to schedule vacations around courier flights.

Some companies are wholesalers, meaning they ship freight on contract from other couriers, usually to points not served by those couriers. For instance, Federal Express may hire another courier to get a package to an overseas point.

Most courier trips made by civilians--about 85% on Now Voyager--are international because major domestic courier companies provide their own overnight service within the United States.

Clarke’s October newsletter listed about 100 available flights from New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Miami, including a $499 round-trip ticket to Hong Kong and $75 round-trip to Bermuda. Round-trip European destinations come as cheap as $150 to Amsterdam.

Clarke started an air courier company that folded, and now lectures on being a courier at “adult education” schools like Boston’s “Learning Adventure,” which offers classes on cooking, hang-gliding and “How to Find a Lover.”

“For all adventurous readers, Now Voyager has just introduced Guatemala as a destination,” Clarke writes in his typewritten “Travel Secrets,” in which he lists available courier flights by company and even proffers vacation tips.

“At $250 round-trip it’s a bargain, and 7 days is enough time to take a side trip to the spectacular Mayan ruins at Tikal.”