How to Book Really Cheap Flight Deals

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When people find out how much I travel, one of the first questions they ask (and even if they don’t, they’re probably thinking it) is how on Earth I afford it. After all, everyone knows that flying to another country is super expensive, right? Wrong. I’ve spent a lot of time traveling, and along the way I’ve picked up a few methods for saving as much money as possible. Although you’ll probably come across plenty of folks online who promise to share things like “One Airfare Hack the Travel Industry Doesn’t Want You to Know!” there really is no wizardry or secret tricks involved in getting a good deal on airline tickets. There are strategies to saving money on flights, but it’s nothing too complicated and just requires a bit of basic knowledge on when and where to begin looking.

Some cheap flights I’ve gotten in the last year include: Jakarta, Indonesia to Singapore for $23, Manila, Philippines to Bali, Indonesia for under $51, and Hanoi, Vietnam to Manila, Philippines for just $76.

Your average traveler decides specifically where they want to go and when they want to leave, and then heads online to book their flight for those dates. If you’ve got a bottomless budget, this approach will work just fine. Personally, as someone who wants to stretch every dollar (to spend them on more useful things, like travel experiences), I approach flight shopping the same way I approach grocery shopping: I shop the sales, see what’s in season, and then make a decision on what to cook for dinner based upon the affordable produce I’ve just bought.

With airline ticket buying I begin with a rough idea of where I want to go and when I want to leave. The more flexible your schedule is, the better your chances of reducing your travel costs. Unless my heart is set on starting in one place, I’ll search several possible destinations and try out multiple departure and return dates for each, checking the surrounding airports as well. This brings us to the first tip for getting cheap flights:

Spend Time Researching

This seems to be the first step for half of the how-to articles I write, but even if I’ve said it 100 times it’s still just as true. The biggest difference between me and the people sitting next to me on a plane who paid 3 times what I did is that I did extensive research and planned ahead to get the best deal.

My research process begins with checking a few travel search engines: Google Flights, Skyscanner, Momondo, and Kayak. They all work in a fairly similar way, comparing airfare costs and offering the ability to set fare alerts, but it’s worth running a search on all of them since the results do differ.

Be Flexible with Travel Dates

The more flexibility you’ve got when it comes to your departure and return date, the better your odds of finding a ridiculously cheap price on airline tickets. I recently booked a one way ticket across the US from San Francisco to Miami with a base fare of just $84. Tickets on the same airline for the day before and the day after were over $300 for the same route, but because I had some flexibility in when I needed to fly, I was able to take advantage of the lowest fare available. Over the course of just a week, it’s not unusual to see fare differences of hundreds of dollars between the different days, so even a few days of wiggle room on when you need to depart and return can mean enormous savings.

Consider Flying in the Off-Season

Sure, January may not be the best time to visit Siberia, but off-season travel doesn’t always mean frigid weather or broiling humidity and rain. Find out when peak season is for your destination and then compare that with the weather during other parts of the year. In Thailand, for example, peak season falls somewhere between November and March, while the rainy season lasts from June to October. For cost savings, you might consider a trip during the shoulder season in April or May when the rain is still infrequent in most places but the crowds have thinned, leaving plenty of great deals to be had on everything from airfare to accommodation.

Check Nearby Airports

Your home airport is not always going to have the best flight deals – to increase your odds of travel savings, check nearby airports as well. You’ll find this feature built into most of the airfare comparison sites, and even if you’ve got a favorite airport, it’s probably worth making the trip to the next city over if it saves you $200.

The Best Day to Fly for Maximum Savings

The common wisdom that gets repeated often seems to be that Tuesday, Wednesday, and Saturday are, in general, the cheapest days to fly. In reality though, the answer is that it really depends. Numerous factors like where you’re going and what time of year you’re going affect the cost of airfare, and a quick search for any destination will likely show you just how unpredictable airfare costs can be on any day of the week.

The Best Time to Book Airline Tickets

A lot like choosing the best day to fly, there’s no perfect formula for when the best day to buy flights is. There are a lot of opinions on this, but again the reality is that prices are seasonal, destination specific, and demand related. One of Kayak’s attractive features is their price forecasting advice, which gives users recommendations on whether to book tickets now or wait for lower fares, based upon an analysis of past and present prices for the particular route.

Personally, when I’m not in a rush to find a last minute deal I’ll usually start searching for cheap airline tickets a few months in advance. I keep track of the price trends I see over the course of a week or two and when I see a price that looks especially low, I’ll jump on it. You can never be guaranteed that you’re booking at the exact right time: ticket prices might go up, or they might keep going down.

Travel Light to Keep Luggage Costs Down

For budget travelers after the cheapest fares, low-cost carriers like Spirit & Frontier in the US, Ryanair & EasyJet in Europe, and Jetstar and Cebu Pacific in Asia can offer tickets for much less, sometimes hundreds, than full service carriers for the same routes. Flying with the low cost, budget airlines does come with some sacrifices – you probably won’t be getting any complimentary peanuts or drinks on your flight, seats are often much smaller and sometimes don’t recline, and of course there are serious restrictions on how much luggage you can bring without incurring additional baggage fees.

To truly take advantage of the lowest, rock-bottom fares takes some clever packing. Many budget airlines have weight restrictions on carry-on bags: Air Asia, Scoot, Nok Air, and several others limit passengers to just 7kg in their free cabin baggage allowance. Others, like Spirit and Frontier, charge for carry-on bags but allow a personal item 18 x 14 x 8 inches (45 x 35 x 20 cm) to fly free. If you can squeeze everything you need into a small backpack or bag, you can pay just the base fare without adding on more expensive luggage options. Can it be done? Absolutely! You’ll just need to be selective about how much gear you bring with you on your travels.

Embrace the Layovers

Direct flight are great, but they’re frequently much more expensive. I like to look for flights with very long layovers so that I can actually get out of the airport and explore a destination I might otherwise not get to see on my trip. Some airports even offer free layover tours for passengers in transit with enough time to kill like Singapores Changi Airport, Incheon International Airport, Tokyo’s Narita International Airport, and others.

Check Flight Prices in Foreign Currencies

You might be able to save a bit of money on some flights by switching the currency used. For instance, if you’re looking at flying with a Thai airline, try switching your currency to Thai baht to see if it offers a better fare. Keep in mind that if you’re paying with a foreign currency, you’ll want to make sure your credit card doesn’t charge any foreign transaction fees for this, or any savings on the tickets might be undone by credit card fees.

Use a VPN to Check Prices

This is a more advanced money saving trick that isn’t guaranteed to always work, but can sometimes save quite a bit. A VPN (VPN is short for Virtual Private Network) creates a secure connection over the internet and prevents others from snooping on your web traffic. If you imagine the public internet as a tunnel that anyone can eavesdrop in, the VPN creates a private tunnel inside of the tunnel that keeps your activity hidden from view. It’s a handy tool for frequent travelers and can make it so that it appears to a website that you’re in a country you’re not. By switching the VPN server location, you’ll often be directed to different localized versions of travel search engines and the price differences for the same flights can potentially be significant.

Book The Return Flight on Another Airline

There’s no rule that says you have to fly both legs of a journey on the same airline or even under the same booking. Roundtrip tickets are frequently less expensive than two one way tickets, but not always. Swap carriers and see if you can save by flying to your destination using one airline and flying home on another.

 

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