I am one of those people who will spend hours trying to score a cheap flight. I love traveling and I am flexible with some of my destinations so if there is a price incentive to fly to a certain place, I will book the flight and think of the logistics later. Not everyone likes uncertainty and not everyone is as flexible as I am which means that finding a deal may be a little more tricky. In this quick guide on how to find cheap flights you will find tricks that will ensure you find cheap tickets every single time.
These are tricks that have enabled me to travel to Europe for $199 from Boston, $800 from Los Angeles to Bora Bora and Boston to Japan for $500 round trip. Those are huge bargains that mean you can spend that money towards something else. I speak from experience when I say that you can find affordable flights if you use the tips below.
One more bonus trick is to shop around for hotels to get great deals. I usually use TripAdvisor and Orbitz because not only do I get good deals but they have great customer service. I have cancelled on Orbitz and received a full refund because of their loyalty program!
Table of Contents
How to Find Cheap Flights:
Use a search engine tool that has notifications
My personal favorite is Skyscanner and Google flights. You can set up an alert for when there are price changes. I have woken up at night to a notification that has saved me hundreds of dollars. These deals don’t last long because they could be error fares, rush discounts or just human error. But guess what if the transaction goes through the airline will honor the ticket most of the time.
Be flexible with your destination and time
This has been a learning curve for me because sometimes you are set on where to go. However, you may find that a flight to Tulum in October is a fraction of what it would be in June, so you have an opportunity to save money. On Skyscanner you can set the search to “Everywhere” and “Cheapest Month”.
What this means that if you want to travel in January for example you can set the destination search to “Everywhere” in January and it will give you options with fares that you can pick. Alternatively, you can set the destination search to wherever you want to go but, in the time, you select “Cheapest Month”. There will always be an opportunity to save this way.
Also, flights that very early in the morning or red eye flights tend to be cheaper which is an opportunity to save.
Search for airfare under private setting
Your browser has an option to go incognito. I cannot stress this enough. Always try to buy tickets under a hidden browser. This prevents the browser from saving your search and potentially increasing the fare when really there are opportunities to save.
Sign up for airfare alerts/notifications
The alerts are usually very random, but you will almost always find a fare to a place that you are interested in. Some of the popular fare watch dogs are Dollar Flight Club, Scott’s Cheap Flights, Secret Flying and Airfare Watchdog.
Try for a connecting flight
This strategy works if there is a departure airport that an airline favors with nice deals. LAX and JFK usually have great deals across the board. If you can fly to one of these destinations at a bargain price, then you can find good deals this way. It may be beneficial to change the departing airport in your search.
The other alternative is to fly to multiple destinations and what this does is if an airline flies to the destinations that you are interested in non-stop there is an incentive to earn that money for you. So maybe on your way to Bali add a stopover in Singapore. You may find that it’s cheaper to fly to Bali which is your intended destination through Singapore.
Try to ensure that you pack light to avoid paying for baggage especially on bargain airlines.
One last thing folks. Do you have travel medical insurance? I always recommend getting travel medical insurance because you just never know. With travel insurance if anything happens all the qualified medical expenses are reimbursable. Check out SafetyWing’s travel medical insurance to protect yourself.
1 Comment