10 Tips to Find The Best Flight Deals
You’ve been scrolling through your Instagram feed looking at photos from all over the world. Places you’re dying to see but are just out of reach because of the expensive flights. You’re wondering how they can afford to fly to all these luxury locations! The truth? They’ve found the hacks to cheap flights, the same ones we’re going to share with you today.
With a whole lot of patience, a little bit of luck, and following these awesome tips, you’ll be able to book cheap flights as early as tomorrow.
1. Go Incognito
This is no joke. When looking for cheap flights open an incognito window before you enter your search query.
Here’s why you should do it.
Booking websites use cookies to track user interaction. They know you’ve been looking at flights to and from a particular destination. There is nothing to stop them from slightly bumping up the rates for that particular flight. When you repeatedly make the same flight search, the AI behind the scenes could interpret that as an increase in demand. As demand increases and supply remains constant, prices are bound to increase.
Also, if you search the same route for similar dates more than once, they know that you’re very interested and are likely to book this even if the price rises.
Do yourself a favor, next time clear your history and cookies then use incognito or private mode before searching.
2. Use The Best Flight Search Engines
Sites like Google Flights, Skyscanner, SecretFlying.com, The Flight Deal, Jetto, Scott’s Cheap Flights, Thrifty Traveler, and Dollar Flight Club, have been built specifically to help you find affordable flights, so use them wisely. A lot of these sites have the functionality of helping you find the best days to fly out and the best times to fly.
You can also use a combination of these websites to compare the best flight deals available to you. If you have multiple days you can fly, use the “whole month” option to see the lowest fares within a range of days.
3. Book Way In Advance For Cheap Flights
Unless you have been blessed by the travel gods it is unlikely that you will find a good flight deals the closer you get to your departure date. Our advice, book your flight at least 7 weeks in advance of the actual travel date. Not only do you get the most affordable rates on flights, you also have an added bit of flexibility in case your plans need to be changed.
4. Be Flexible
This tip is more for the wanderers who don’t have a particular destination in mind. If you’re flexible with your departure date, arrival time, destination, all things that make up your holiday, you’re sure to get a great deal. If the choice comes down to taking a day off work and getting the best deal or paying extra because you think work is more important what do you think you’ll pick?
Today I tested this out. I typed in ‘from’ my closest airport “Vancouver” ‘to’ “Everywhere” for “Cheapest Months” on Skyscanner. The results? San Francisco from CAD$245 return in October, Mexico from $253 return in October, Iceland from $389 return in August, Taiwan from $480 in November.
Go type it in at Skyscanner and see where you can go! (Don’t forget to comment your best find below!)
5. Get Creative
Sometimes taking the long way around works to your benefit. If you don’t mind spending more hours on a plane you can visit two or even three destinations for less than the price of one.
For instance, a trip planned on Skyscanner found that a flight from Ireland to Malaysia was 590 euros. Without a restriction of time, you can break the flight up into several smaller flights then fly from Ireland – Barcelona – Mumbai – Malaysia for only 380 euros. That is a saving you cannot ignore.
You’ll spend longer in the air in the long run, but with these longer flights and stops you can experience new places and save money.
The catch to this technique can be if you’re checking in luggage as you will generally have to pay extra for each flight. Learn how to pack light and it will save you hundreds of dollars. Another thing to consider is whether the airport has an arrival/departure tax.
6. Fly Early
Flights that leave at ‘inconvenient times’ are usually the cheapest. This means that yes, you may have to wake up at 1am to make that 4:30am flight, but it’ll definitely be worth it. To make some large savings with cheap flights you have to be willing to make small sacrifices.
It’s also logical when you think about it, as a majority of the traffic will be traveling to the airport at these peak times as well. I’d rather be on a plane flying out on a holiday with my cheap flight tickets then stuck in traffic on my way to the airport. What about you?
7. Don’t Book Connecting Flights, Make Them Separate Trips
For lengthy journeys, our instinct is to go with what we see and book the connecting flight as we see on the booking sites. What we should do instead is to search how much those individual trips would be and if cheaper, make two separate trips of the journey. Instead of going from Destination A to C with an auto connecting flight at Destination B, book flights from A to B and B to C separately. Not only will this save you a ton of money, you’ll also get a day to check out a new destination.
Pro Tip: Never book connecting flights that are just hours apart. Murphy’s law is always on and what can go wrong will, and you might just miss your connecting. Make sure your connecting flight is at least 12 hours apart when booking it yourself.
If you book through a travel agent and find a great priced flight with a stopover, these stopovers can generally be extended for up to a year. All you have to do is ask!
8. Find The Cheapest Airport To Fly To
Let’s say you plan to fly from Australia to India. Even if you want to visit Mumbai, maybe there are several other airports where it will be cheaper for you to fly to. Flying from Sydney to Mumbai, via Chennai could be cheaper than flying directly to Mumbai.
You can use the great functionality on Kiwi.com to find out the cheapest location for you to fly to in your country of choice. You could potentially save hundreds of dollars. Not bad for a few seconds of extra effort.
9. Research Budget Airlines
Occasionally budget airlines will have heavily discounted fares posted only on their websites. Before you do any other research see what kind of rates you see on the budget airline website.
You won’t find these tickets anywhere else, so we suggest even signing up for a few newsletters. Maybe you’ll hit on a great sales promotion they’re doing.
You also learn when these airlines have their big sales. For the last few years, we’ve noticed Jetstar have their birthday sale around June. They have a promotion where you can fly to a destination then return for free. An example would be flying return Cairns to Tokyo from $289, Melbourne to Honolulu from $339 and Melbourne to Phuket from $289! Just check the dates these flights are available for – I’ll give you a hint, not during peak times!
10. Form A Partnership
Sign up for a travel membership with an airline, or avail one of their many credit cards. Not only will you be getting plenty of reward points and flight miles, you’ll also be first to hear about their exciting offers. Many banks offer generous sign-up rewards, We’ve seen up to 100,000 bonus miles offered.
If you do invest in a credit card make sure you have the dedication and funds to pay it off every month. Also, pay attention to the terms and conditions, you don’t want to get caught out of unexpected fees.
Pro Tip: Use this method only when you know the airlines or airline partners cover most destinations you would like to visit.