Today, we can travel by plane at a very low cost. Gone are the days when traveling by plane was an unattainable luxury. You can often find inexpensive airline tickets on the internet, which are, however, gone in a few minutes. If you want to travel cheaply, tickets often might be the most expensive item on the list. But it is possible to get them at a reduced price. If you want to become an expert on searching for cheap flights, it is important to understand what makes up the whole price. It is essential to know where to look for tickets, which sources use, and what kind of tricks to learn to reduce the ticket price to its minimum. You may be surprised how simple it can be. This article will teach you everything you need to get cheap flights literally for a song. So, where are you going next?
Boarding pass can be nowadays manually typing 🙂 This is an example of our tickets from Arusha airport in Tanzania (it wasn’t cheap flight at all)
Conditions for buying cheap flights
Nonstop flight or with stopover
Most people assume that a direct flight must be necessarily cheaper than a transfer flight. Well, the opposite is true. Airlines get most profit from business travelers who need to get to their destination as fast as possible and don’t care much about the price. That’s why direct flights almost always cost more. Thus, flights with stopovers are used to fill more seats on the flights which are not as busy.
Weekdays only
Because of business travelers, tickets for flights that depart on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays tend to be the cheapest. Flights departing in the morning or the evening are the most expensive because traveling businessmen usually take a flight back home the same day.
Airline competitor
It is essential to know whether you are traveling to a destination where only one airline company provides their services. In such a case, the company may set almost any price. If that’s the case, try to look for nearby airports. You may be pleasantly surprised how much cheaper the ticket can be.
Time flexibility
Try to be as flexible as you can. Don’t look for tickets for specific dates rather set time periods instead. Concretely, instead of looking for tickets with departure on September 3th and return on the 12th, aim for those tickets with arrival and departure on any day in September. If possible, try to avoid Christmas, New Year’s Eve, Easter, or other big holidays. This is when the prices are at their highest.
Act fast and buy
If you find tickets for a good price, do not hesitate and book them immediately. Prices can change very fast, at any minute, especially if they are at a discount, or advertised at the wrong price.
Departure and arrival airport flexibility
Never limit yourself when it comes to places of departure and arrival. Always try to find flights to other big airports. For example, if I want to fly to Phuket in Thailand, I can probably find a much cheaper ticket to Bangkok, from which I can then fly to Phuket for an extremely low price. Try to look for tickets with various places of departure and arrival.
View at night Istanbul from Pegasus Airline plane
How much time in advance and where to buy airline tickets
How much time in advance should you book your tickets? That is not an easy question, and there’s no right answer to it. Generally, we can say that the classic airline companies offer the cheapest tickets 2-3 months before departure. But this is not true during Christmas or New Year’s Eve when the prices are always high. The low-cost airline companies offer the lowest prices usually 6 weeks before departure, but only in the case that the flight is not busy. Some low-cost companies, usually Wizzair, tend to offer very cheap tickets a year in advance.
Make enough time for looking up your tickets. It is not likely that you’ll sit down at the computer and find your desired ticket at a reduced price in 10 minutes. Try searching regularly. Here are the best and our favourite websites to look for your dream tickets:
Google owns this technology is in ownership of Google, and sells it to other booking websites. You cannot buy the tickets via Matrix right away; it’s only useful for searching current prices. So, what are the benefits? It’s fast, simple, and you can search through tons of airports at the same time. And finally, you can examine the exact terms of the tariff.
A price comparison website of many other search engines. It doesn’t provide very flexible searching, but it is quite fast. The biggest advantage is that you can look up tickets by months; however, this function is limited to the rather distant future.
We recommend trying the Skyscanner mobile app for Android or iOS.
This one is absolutely the best search engine for low-cost air tickets for Europe and surrounding countries. The project has Czech origin and it has big potential. It hasn’t spread around the rest of the world yet, but the boys are trying hard and, for example, it has started to expand into South Asia.
Another Czech project, formerly named Skypicker, based in Brno. This search engine combines options of other search engines for traditional airline tickets, adding low-cost companies to it. Thanks to this, you can buy remarkably cheaper tickets to less busy airports. They also provide nice searching according to a map.
Where to find truly cheap flights
Up to now, we have been talking about “traditional flights”, but what if I want to find flight deals, or so-called error air fare? Finding such tickets on your own has a zero probability of occurring. The best option is to follow blogs, or their Facebook pages, focusing on this topic.
You can follow these websites, or just check out Flightor where you can find all flight deals and error fares in one place.
How to reduce the price of flights even more
If you find a cheap ticket, there are extra options on how to make it even cheaper. Here are our hacks on how to do it:
Rumbo
This method can cut up to USD 40 from the price of some tickets, via Rumbo.es and other related search engines, using certain kinds of credit cards. Read our article about this method here.
EasyJet hack
There has been an error at the EasyJet website for a couple years, which could decrease the price a bit.
Fuel Dumping
This method is very difficult and time-consuming. It involves dumping a part of the fuel surcharge. Read our article about this method here.
Airline Club Membership
Some low-cost airline companies sell an annual membership, which can reduce prices remarkably for members. Specifically, Wizzair and Volotea. In case of Wizzair, membership already pays off when booking return tickets for two people.
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Nice post! Thanks for sharing the information! I travel frequently to other countries. The information present on the blog is really useful and written in a good manner. I am looking forward to getting more Articles about finding the cheap flights.
Hi Ashley, thank you for your nice comment, we are very happy that our article can help to other travelers 🙂
Wow, marvelous blog layout! How long have you been running
a blog for? you made blogging look easy. The total look of your website is wonderful,
let alone the content material!
Hi Eusebia, thank you for nice comment, we are blogging for 2 years already. We are happy you like it. But it is not easy work and we are still have a lot of to improve.