How to Find the Cheapest Flights – My 10 Tips

If you fly as often as I do it pays off to know how to find the cheapest flights.

So, I want to share with you my 10 tips to get cheap flights, no matter where in the world you want to fly to.

How to Find the Cheapest Flights

1. Know Where to Search for Cheap Flights

Several of the budget airlines aren’t on large comparison sites for flights such as Kayak, Expedia, or Orbitz. While they are worth checking, I almost always end up choosing my flights through Skyscanner, which offers:

• The broadest range of airlines
• Flexible search tools to find the best deals for different locations and dates

Another good website for cheap flights is Kiwi.com
And check out Google Flights

Although I’m a big fan of Skyscanner and think it’s the best search engine for cheap flights most of the time, no single website is consistently perfect.

Therefore try a combination of search engines for flights to ensure you’re not missing any results. There doesn’t seem to be one that gets the cheapest flight 100% of the time.

Pro Tip: If you want to find the cheapest flights and don’t mind connecting flights with sometimes longer layovers, check out Kiwi.com: they are great at combining flights from low-cost airlines to get you to wherever you want to go for a lot less.

Kiwi has saved me a lot of money on several flights but also made me spend a lot of time at airports waiting for my cheap connecting flight.

Also Read: What to Do During a Long Layover

And, when you can, ask locals for their tips on how to get cheap flights as well!

Especially on less popularly booked routes and/or in remote regions, there might be other ways to get cheaper flights (offline offers through local travel agencies for example) or there might be small local airlines that are not listed in online search engines for flights such as Skyscanner but can be found somewhere else.

If you don’t have any contacts in the country (yet) try a platform such as Facebook groups to ask locals or people with more knowledge of your destination for advice.

Also Read: Flight Delayed? This is How to Get Compensation Under EU Law

2. Be Flexible with Your Travel Dates

Prices for plane tickets vary based on:

• The day of the week
• The time of year
• Upcoming holidays such as Christmas and New Year’s Eve

It is often cheaper to fly in the middle of the week than on a weekend because most people travel on weekends and airlines raise their prices then. Prices are also often cheaper if you fly right after a major holiday.

Early-morning or late-night flights are cheaper most of the time because fewer people want to travel then.

Before you commit to your departure, make sure you check other dates to find the cheapest day. Even the difference of one day can mean a huge saving!

While many theories exist around booking specifically on a Tuesday to save money, the reality is there is no consistent truth as to exactly which days are the cheapest to fly.

Your best strategy is to get a quick visual of prices for a whole month to see what days are the cheapest for your specific route.

Skyscanner has the option to select an entire month so that you can see prices for different days. Or, if you are really flexible, you can even just click on “Cheapest month” to get their best deals:

3. Be Flexible with Your Destinations / Airports

Often there will be more than one airport close to your destination. Don’t only check flights to the nearest airport.

If you want to find the cheapest flights and don’t mind traveling a bit longer you can often find a better deal by flying to a nearby airport and taking a bus or train (or even renting a car) from there to your destination.

Most major cities have a smaller, secondary airport. This is the airport many budget airlines fly into because it helps keep their costs down since secondary airports generally charge smaller landing fees.

Check out which airlines fly into these smaller airports to save some money. For example, you can take Avelo to Burbank Airport, instead of flying into LAX. And in Europe, the low-cost airline Ryanair offers much cheaper flights, and more routes, from Eindhoven, the Netherlands, than from Amsterdam Airport.

Be sure to check how far the airports are from where you want to go though. Because sometimes transportation from the airport to the city can actually make a budget airline more expensive. However, in general, these budget airlines are a good deal.

Pro Tip: Kayak Explore is a fun tool to check out prices for different destinations. Enter your departure city and select a month or season to fly. Approximate costs then appear for hundreds of destinations around the globe, allowing you to see the most cost-effective place you can fly to.

Google Flights offers a similar tool.

4. Check out the Budget Airlines

Budget airlines offer significantly cheaper tickets than their full-service counterparts. They are not always included in major search engines for flights so it pays to check flights on their websites.

Do check their terms & conditions: for example, they often have very strict luggage restrictions and will charge high fees if your luggage doesn’t fit within their restrictions.

These are some of the better low-cost airlines worldwide:

United States

• JetBlue Airways (also offers good connections to the Caribbean)
• Porter Airlines
• Southwest Airlines
• Allegiant Air
• Frontier Airlines
• Avelo Airlines

Canada

• Porter Airlines
• Air Transat (offers flights to many Caribbean, Latin American, and European destinations)

Australia & New Zealand

• Jetstar (good connections to Asian destinations and New Zealand)
• Virgin Australia
• Air New Zealand

Asia

• Air Asia
• Jeju Air
• Jetstar
• Hong Kong Express
• Scoot (offers good connections with Australia)
• Peach Air
• Spice Jet
• Spring Airlines
• Vietnam Airlines
• Nok Air
• IndiGo

Europe

• Vueling
• Ryanair
• Easyjet
• Norwegian Air (also offers really cheap flights to the USA)
• Aer Lingus
• Wizz Air

Also Read: Tips to Find Cheap Business Class Flights to Europe

Central & South America

• LATAM Airlines Group (consisting of LAN and TAM)
• GOL Linhas aereas

Wikipedia offers a more extensive list of low cost airlines although some of them are more low cost than others.

Also keep in mind that although they are listed per country on Wikipedia, many airlines connect between many other countries as well. For example, you can use Spanish airline Vueling to fly from Amsterdam, the Netherlands, to Rome, Italy.

5. Try Alternative Routes

Not only does it help to be flexible with dates and destinations, but try being flexible with the route you take as well.

For example, sometimes it’s cheaper to fly to London and take a budget airline to Amsterdam than to fly direct to Amsterdam.

There are so many budget carriers around the world that taking advantage of a good deal to another city and then hopping on a budget flight to your destination is sometimes the best way to go.

6. Fly Two Different Airlines or Airports

Sometimes it’s worth it to mix and match.

Most airlines sell one-way flights at reasonable prices, meaning one airline might be cheaper for the outbound flight while the other airline works better for the return.

You could even fly to one airport and depart from another.

7. Book Connecting Flights Yourself

If you’re flying somewhere that involves a transfer, say from Canada to Australia which typically involves Canada to Los Angeles, then Los Angeles to Australia, consider that it may be cheaper to book these two legs separately on your own.

Just make sure you leave enough time to make your connecting flight in case the first flight arrives late.

And this way you could even turn your stop into an additional destination by flying out a few days later instead of the same day. That’s a great way to discover a new city you otherwise might have never visited!

8. Book Early, But Not Too Early

Real last minute deals on flights barely seem to exist anymore.

Ticket prices often go up the closer you get to the date of flying. Therefore don’t wait until the last second but neither book very far in advance.

The best booking window I have been told is six to eight weeks before your flight, or around three months before if you are going to your destination during peak season.

9. Eliminate the ‘Cookie Problem’

Yes it really happens: search for a flight a few times in a row and all of a sudden the price has gone up.

Based on your browser’s cookies, flight prices increase when a particular route is repeatedly searched, as the site wants to scare you into booking the flight quickly before prices get even higher.

Always search for flights in incognito or private browsing mode to see the lowest prices.

In Google Chrome or Safari, incognito is enabled by hitting Command (or “Control” if using PC), Shift, “N”. For Mozilla Firefox or Internet Explorer, hit Command (or “Control” if using a PC), Shift, “P”. This will open a new browser window where your information is not tracked, thus not inflating prices as you search.

Your cookies reset each time you re-open an incognito window. So if you want to start with a clean slate for each flight search (so your previous searches aren’t “remembered”, potentially inflating the price of flights), close all your incognito windows, open a new one, and then perform your flight search.

10. Join a Mailing List

I know, all those newsletters can get annoying but by signing up for mailing lists from airlines and travel search engines you’ll be able to get updates about all the last-minute or special deals that are happening.

Many times the cheap flights are only available for 24 or 48 hours so without these newsletters you will miss out on many of the super-cheap deals that occur.

If I didn’t receive the Qatar Airways newsletter I would have missed out on a huge discount on my flight from Doha to Paris.

Airfarewatchdog.com, Holidaypirates.com, and Theflightdeal.com have good deal lists to subscribe to.

If you use the same airline(s) a lot it pays to join their frequent-flyer program or use a credit card that’s tied to the airline. Personally though, because I always go for the cheapest flights I end up using different airlines all the time. But still, signing up is free so why not see how many points you can accumulate and what benefits you can get out of your memberships!

And of course, if you want the cheapest flight, be prepared to get up very early, fly late at night, or spend a good few hours (or an entire night) at an airport waiting for a connecting flight…

But, the more you save, the more you can travel!

And, my last bit of advice, make sure you have good travel insurance. Because these low-cost airlines might save you money on your flights, they aren’t known for their great service when things go wrong.

Also Read:

• How to Sleep on a Plane – Practical Tips & Tricks
• 10 Reasons to Travel – Why Travel Is So Rewarding
• How to Save Money When Traveling
• Flying Etihad Airways – My Review Plus Practical Info

 
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Featured image: my cheap flight from the Caribbean island of Bonaire to Aruba

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