In most cases, the most expensive aspect of a trip is the airfare. Finding a cheap flight may make or break your trip, whether you’re a solo traveler or a family planning a holiday overseas.
Here are some tips for you to book your flights cheaper!
Make use of miles and points
Sign up for a travel rewards card as soon as you can if you haven’t already! They include aircraft upgrades, large welcome bonuses, ridesharing credit for Uber or Lyft, free events, access to airport lounges, and much more.
You should be enrolled in a reward program regardless of how frequently you fly. You also don’t need to spend any further money. Without flying or spending any more money, you can be able to earn a good amount of miles per year. You can travel across the world for very little money if you use your money well and collect points and miles. Master the technique of “travel hacking”.
Be flexible with your travel dates and times
The cost of an airline ticket varies significantly based on the day of the week, the time of year, and upcoming holidays such as Christmas, New Year’s Eve, Thanksgiving, etc. Everyone wants to vacation somewhere warm in the winter or travel while the kids are out of school, so August is a popular month for traveling around Europe.
Basically, if you fly when everyone else is flying, your ticket will be more expensive.
Make an effort to be flexible with your schedule. If you really want to go to Paris, go in the spring or fall when there are less tourists and flights are cheaper. The solution is to travel during the off-season.
Furthermore, flying throughout the week is nearly always less expensive than flying on the weekend because most people travel on weekends, and airlines raise their charges. Prices are also lower if you go after a major holiday, as well as early-morning and late-night flights, because less people prefer to travel at those times.
Because most business travelers fly on Fridays and Mondays, those days are also the most expensive.
Be open-minded about your travel plans
If you can’t be flexible with your flight schedule, at least be flexible with your destination. It’s ideal to be both, but if you truly want to save money and secure a cheap flight for your vacation, you must at least be flexible with one.
Airline search tools have made it quite simple to scan the entire globe for the best deal. You don’t have to go through the hassle of searching manually, city by city, day by day. These allow you to compare numerous destinations quickly and easily without having to think about every conceivable choice. You’ll probably come upon some interesting places you hadn’t considered before!
Pick out some alternative routes beforehand and go with the most affordable one!
Keep an eye out for campaigns – Join newsletters
Make sure you’ve signed up for certain emails before you start hunting for specific lights. Joining last-minute deal websites’ mailing lists will offer you access to the finest deals available. It is also crucial to subscribe to your preferred airline’s mailing list!
Yes, all those newsletters can be annoying to receive everyday, but by signing up for mailing lists from airlines and travel search engines, you’ll be notified of all the current last-minute or special bargains.
Many of the super-cheap flights are only available for 24 or 48 hours, so you’ll lose out on a lot of them if you don’t sign up for these emails.
Book your flight early (but not too early)
The closer you approach to your departure date, the higher the airline rates become. However, there is a sweet spot when the airlines begin to drop or raise fares dependent on demand. Don’t wait until the last minute to book, but don’t book too long ahead of time either.
The optimal time to book your flight is two to three months before departure, or five months before departure if you’re visiting during high season.
Get rid of the ‘Cookie Issue’
Yes, that does happen: you search for a flight a few times in a row and the price suddenly rises.
Travel prices actually increase when a particular route is regularly searched, based on cookies in your computer browser, as the site aims to scare you into booking the flight immediately before prices go even higher.
To see the best prices, always search for flights in incognito or private browser mode.
When you re-open an incognito window, your cookies are reset. So, if you want to start each travel search with a blank slate (so your past searches aren’t “remembered,” potentially raising flight prices), close all your incognito windows, open a new one, and then do your flight search.
Fly from a smaller airport
If you always fly into a city’s main airport, you can end up paying a lot of money. Choosing a smaller and less popular airport can save you a lot of money, even with the car ride to the destination you wanted to fly to in the first place. Look out for other airports in big cities or even the cities nearby.
