A popular question we receive as travel bloggers is how do we afford to travel full and tips to find cheap flights. We are always on the lookout for a cheap flight deal as an expensive ticket can break your travel budget.
In this article we will share with you six tips to find cheap flights. Follow these tips when you plan your next vacation or getaway and you will be surprised how much money you can save on traveling.
1. Use a fare aggregator website
Before buying a ticket we love doing research. We compare prices on several different websites until we find a good price on tickets or a cheaper airline. We use Kayak.com, Google Flight, Skyscanner, Momondo, and directly on the airlines website to find the best deal. We have seen that Kayak is cheaper when traveling within the Americas while Skyscanner is cheaper when flying in Europe. Of course, that has being our experience but you should always check several options!
2. Set Flight Alarms
You can set up flight alerts on different websites to get an email when prices are lower than average or trending down to a specific destination from your departure airport. This is the best option if you have flexible travel dates.
3. Be Flexible
This might be a little bit harder when you have to plan your vacations ahead of time but having flexible travel dates can save you a considerable amount of money on flights. For example, Kayak has the option to search for a flight including +/- 1, 2, or 3 days from your desired travel date. Skyscanner allows you to see pricing for a whole month.
Be flexible on the dates you can travel as well as the destination you want to visit. Kayak or Skyscanner both have the option to search the cheapest flights from your departure airport to any destination. Choose your desired travel dates and find the best destinations to visit in your budget.
4. Make your own travel package
If you are not able to find a good price for flights it can be cheaper to build your own itinerary on different airlines. For example, searching round trip from Raleigh to Madrid, Spain the tickets where showing for about $1,200.
We know that flying from Boston to Madrid is cheaper so what we did is buy a round trip ticket from Raleigh to Boston and another round trip ticket from Boston to Madrid, saving almost $400 by doing it this way. The only thing to be careful with additional baggage fees, as national flights often have different baggage allowance than an international destination.
5. Try flying from an alternative destination
Flying from or into an alternative airport might be less convenient, but if it saves you big bucks then it is worth doing.
Look into using AirporInformation.com to find up-to-date flights to and from thousands of airports worldwide.
For example, when We want to fly from Raleigh to Guayaquil, it is always cheaper to fly from Greensboro, which is serviced by Spirit Airlines. Even though Greensboro is 80 minutes from Raleigh, the tickets can end up being half the price, even when taking into account driving to the airport.
6. Use an incognito window to do your search
Yes, opening up an incognito window to book a flight is helpful. At first, we were not sure about using incognito to search for a flight, but after trying this method found it actually works!
The thing is that the airlines and third party sites leave cookies on your browser. This way the company knows when you are searching a route multiple times and can raise prices as you appear to be closer to buying a ticket. A good way to avoid this is by opening a new incognito window each time you search for cheap flight deals.
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