How to Find Cheap Flight Tickets: Expert Tips to Save Big on Airfare
Flight is usually one of the biggest parts of your travel expenses, so it is very important to make sure you will find the cheapest airline ticket possible. In this article, I am going to show you what can you do to make your airline ticket as cheap as possible. I always follow these instructions and If you also will, you will never be the one on a flight who paid the most.
Well, there are a lot of reasons why airline tickets are that expensive. From oil prices to limited competition. But it doesn't mean there are any cheap flights - there are, you just have to know how where and how to look.
1. Make possible to change travel time
It's not always easy, but if you have a possibility to make your flight date flexible, you will be able to find better offers a few days earlier or later. Flight prices usually depend on the time of year or even the day of the week. Also buying airline tickets on holidays like Chrismas, New Year's Eve etc. may not be the best idea. Airlines also raise their prices when there are important festivals, holidays, sports event or a school break. If you want to visit big European city like Amsterdam, visit it in fall or spring, it will be cheaper because fewer people will fly there.
Also, it is always cheaper to but your flight during the middle of the week, because most people travel on the weekends. Try very late flights or very early. Also always remember to check one or two days earlier or after your date to make sure it won't be cheaper then because sometimes it can make a huge different. So try to fly when no one does, then you will find your best flight deal.
Practical example
Let's assume that we are looking for a cheap flight from Paris to the Amsterdam on 14th April and we want to get back on 12th May. As we can see below, it will cost us 151 dollars. PS. The search was made in Google Flights.
The thing we do not know is if we will change our departure day to 12th April, we are able to reduce this price to 78 dollars, so it's almost half of our price.
And this is exactly the same flight! As you can see the dates are important and it is always good to check prices of the same flights with near days.
2. Make your destination flexible
Nowadays airline search engines are making it easy to search not only your destination prices but also near airports. It's now not only in Google Flights but also in Kayak (which offers the "Explore" tool). This allows you to write your home destination and just explore the world to find any airport or city you want. If you want just to run away from your home is's an awesome thing for you :-)
Practical example
Let's assume we want to flight from Warsaw (Poland) to Palermo (Sicily, Italy). We want our departure on 12th April and we want to go back on 19th April. As we can see below, this flights will cost us 333 dollars, so it's not cheap at all.
Now, let's take a look is there any other airport on Sicily. There is! Let's check what price will be if we will change our destination from Palermo to Catania (it's about 100 miles from Palermo).
Voila! We were able to reduce the price of our airline tickets from 333$ to 138$, isn't it awesome? If we still want to go to Palermo, we can get there by train for just 15$.
3. Airline tickets price like stops
I know that direct flight can save us some time and nerves, but if we care about reducing airline tickets price we should always check if our flight won't be much cheaper if we will take one or two stops. Of course, if the price is similar, few extra hours may be not worth to save 30 dollars, but in many cases, we will find much better offers using stop flights.
By using many various airlines and finding special offers, we can really save a lot of money. But this method may not be for everyone, because there is more work, as you have to figure out a lot of routes and check different airlines and their websites.
Practical example
Ok, let me show you another practical example on how to buy cheap flights by using stops. Let's say we want to fly from Lisbon (Portugal) to Budapest (Hungary). We need our departure to be 6th September and we want our return flight to be on 16th September. The direct flight will cost us 463 dollars.
But if we only check that we are ok with stops, the price will change. To 232 dollars, so it's a half of direct price.
This is why we should always check all available options, make changes, combine. It will take a little longer, but you can save a lot of you hard worked money.
4. Subscribe newsletters
Nobody likes a lot of emails in their mailbox, but this is a very good way to get updates about last-minute offers or any special deals. Cheap flights are usually available for a short time period, like 24 yours or less, and we usually don't have time to search for the cheap offers every day on many search engines.
There are few websites that are a good start for that:
- Holiday Pirates - you can check category to flights for airline deals only.
- The Flight Deal - for the USA departures only.
- Airfare Watchdog - for the USA departures only.
- JetRadar - if you know exactly when and where you want to go.
5. Only budget carriers
The thing is that if you want, you can always spend a lot of money, even in the cheapest country. You can fly expensive airlines in business class, but this is how you will get for a 1000$ a bit more comfortable seat and maybe a meal. If it's good for you that's fine, but I prefer to keep my money and use it another and in my opinion much better way.
6. Check the same ticket in other currencies
I know this might sound strange, but changing currency for the weaker one may decrease ticket price. I was looking for flights from Europe to Australia and while the price in American dollars was high, the same ticket in New Zealand currency was 1/3 price cheaper. Of course, I have no idea which search engines depend on currency, but it's always worth to try. Of course also remember that if you are using a credit card with a foreign transaction fee, you will pay more.
