How To Get The Cheapest Flights

Airfare is notoriously difficult to predict but with our tips and tricks you will increase your chances of bagging a cheaper flight!

Over the last few years the cost of a plane ticket has risen quite a bit! This is all while fuel prices have been lower and airlines have boasted higher profits. So why are we paying more now? One of the main factors is there’s been a string of airline mergers and bankruptcies in recent years. This has resulted in less competition and a smaller number of new flights, routes and cut price airfares! The airlines don’t have to work as hard anymore in gaining new passengers and snagging market share, because of this they’re flying planes at full capacity with less chance of reduced fares.

Don’t worry though there’s still savings to be made and cheap deals to be found, just follow our guide below!

Here’s a list of top tips of how to get the cheapest flights

1. Search incognito

Ever wondered why when you’ve found a flight and you go back to book it there’s been a sudden price hike? It’s rumoured to be down to a website’s cookies tracking you, so when a particular flight or route is searched the sites cookies are gathering that information, the website then wants to scare you into booking the flight quickly before prices go even higher! In incognito mode however your browsing is private from other users and all search history and cookies are deleted along the way.

We always start our searches in incognito mode, it doesn’t take any extra time and we see it as an extra safeguard, at the very least it gets rid of those annoying tracking adverts!

Remember to open a new incognito window for each flight search so your previous ones aren’t tracked.

If you’re using Google Chrome incognito mode is enabled by hitting command (control on PC) shift and N at the same time.

If you’e using Internet Explorer or Firefox incognito mode is enabled by hitting command (control on PC) shift and P at the same time.

2. Prepare early and search in advance

Start searching for flights well in advance, most airlines release their fares 11-12 months ahead so you can start early and set up fare alerts for specific flights and dates. Setting up a fare alert is really easy, we use Skyscanner for this. Once you’ve searched for your destination and date you just have to click the get price alerts button as shown below and enter your email address. Skyscanner will then check prices regularly and email you if they change.

3. Don’t book too far in advance

Although we recommend to prepare and search ahead of time we would say it’s best not to book too far in advance. We usually book our flights around 10 weeks to 5 months in advance, if you book too far in advance there’s less flights on the system and you’ll likely pay more — we’ve noticed that some of the airlines don’t even add their flights more than 6 months ahead. At the same time don’t leave it too late as prices will increase a lot closer to the travel date, for international-flights, studies suggest 10-12 weeks before is the cheapest time to book unless you are travelling during a destinations peak season. Predicting flight-price trends and finding the best time to book has become almost stock market-like as prices fluctuate constantly. Another way of getting an idea of cheaper months to fly is by using faredetective.com as shown below.

Faredetective.com uses algorithms and historical flight data to produce graph like views of the least and most expensive months to fly to a destination, you can use this information to gain an insight into cheaper travel dates.

4. Shop around

There’s many comparison websites out there when it comes to searching for flights and the best way to get a broad range of results is by using more than one, this will give you the greatest chance of bagging the lowest priced airfare. We generally start with Skyscanner to narrow down our route and date, we then compare results across these four websites….

PROS.

One of the top sites at finding the lowest fares, you can view a whole month of fares on a calendar with flexible dates, set up fare alert emails, find lowest fares to multiple places with the everywhere feature, shows prices for same flight from multiple travel/airline sites, easy to use smartphone app.

CONS.

Brings up quite a few sponsored results, some of the sponsored sites don’t display accurate prices, doesn’t always give the best results on direct flights.

PROS.

Consistently bring up cheapest results, smart user interface, great at searching a ton of travel booking sites at once.

Cons.

Can sometimes be beaten on price, some of the smaller flight/travel websites reputations are questionable requiring further checks before flights are purchased, not the best at searching a wider span of dates.

PROS.

Detailed filters, ability to include or exclude a given airline or connecting airport from results, good at finding availability, returns results quickly, good for searching a broad range of dates with a useful calendar of prices.

CONS.

Bad at finding the absolute cheapest price, missing some of the low-cost airlines and OTAs from certain searches.

PROS.

Good at booking flight and hotel packages, fare alert emails, good mobile phone app, great filters, good for tracking price trends, intuitive map search, good for searching flexible dates.

CONS.

Not the best for multi-city flights or itinerary’s, hotel search results rely heavily on third-party booking sites.

5. Be flexible on dates

Hands down the biggest way to save money on flights is by being flexible with dates and flight times! Here’s a perfect example of this. We’ve used Skyscanners graph view and searched for flights from London to Hong Kong for the entire month of October.

As you can see from the results if you’re flexible on date, flight time and airline you can save a good amount of money!

Airlines rarely reduce prices during holiday season and school breaks as the demand is always there regardless of advanced bookings. Off-season and shoulder season doesn’t always mean bad weather and you can grab much cheaper flights during these periods.

Flying earlier or later during a day can save you money as these are less desirable times to fly!

Red-eye flights are usually the cheapest, these flights leave late at night and arrive early morning so pack a good neck pillow and some ear-plugs and you can save you a good chunk of money.

6. Be flexible on destination

If you can’t be flexible with your dates you could save money by exploring different destinations. There’s a number of websites you can use for narrowing down a cheap destination to fly to, Kayaks “EXPLORE” tool is a great way to view flights to numerous destinations and it brings them up in a world map view, Google.com/flights also has a similar map feature whilst Skyscanner has a search EVERYWHERE tool.

Kayaks “EXPLORE” tool 

7. Look for alternate routes

A good example of using this would be when we wanted to fly from Johannesburg to Nepal, a one-way flight was coming up at around £550 each so we looked for a place to fly to first using a multi-city search and ended up with flights to the Seychelles first then onto Nepal via a 4 hour layover which came in at £273 each. Most of the time these flights can be booked for the same price days apart so if you didn’t want a 4 hour layover you could explore the possibility of adding a few nights on, maybe even a week with the same flight cost.

If you’re flying into a major city look at flights into a smaller neighbouring city or country and then getting another shorter flight or using the train.

If you’re doing a return trip always check for two one way tickets also as these can sometimes be cheaper.

If time’s not an issue book a multi-stop or connecting flight, these flights are nearly always cheaper than the same non-stop flights. There’s numerous occasions where we have added a stopover for a couple of nights onto a trip because it worked out cheaper, we got to see another place and it was good to break up a long flight.

8. Don’t always book the cheapest flight

Do your research when booking that cheaper flight, if it flies into a different airport your transfer costs could outweigh the savings made, check if there’s baggage fees and that your baggage meets the size and weight requirements. Even things such as having no free wi-fi and no meals or drinks included can soon outweigh the savings made on a budget ticket price.

9. Stay Informed

Befriend the airlines. Sign up to newsletters and air miles rewards schemes, by doing this your’e first to know about any deals or fare sales directly from the airlines. Most the airlines have flight offers and promotions, some will even have car rental and hotel offers and most give upgrades to their air-miles members first.

The air miles you accumulate can purchase complete or discounted flights, companion flights and upgrades, some can even be used towards hotels or gifts. There’s a few times we’ve managed to bag a business class flight with Emirates at a fraction of the usual price just by having an Emirates Skywards Account.

Airfare Watchdog and Thrifty Traveller are websites that inform of the best and cheapest fares and current sales. Don’t forget to check social media channels such as Facebook and Twitter as many airlines now announce sales across these platforms, but be quick these can be snapped up within hours.

 10. Search for cashback and voucher codes 

Use cashback websites, there are many cashback websites out there, TopCashback and Quidco are two of the ones we use. Many major airlines will offer cashback through these websites as will some third party booking sites such as Netflights and Skyscanner. We find that January is a good month for airlines issuing voucher codes and deals, and you can sometimes use cashback websites on top of this increasing your savings.

11. Consider round the world tickets and air-pases

Use an AIR-PASS, if you’re travelling to quite a few placed within a specific region such as India or Australia you may benefit from an air-pass. Many national airlines offer these passes to promote tourism in their countries. The passes will enable you to travel by plane around a country usually a select number of times at a discounted rate. Different passes have different rules and restrictions but can also come with a host of benefits such as lowest price guarantee or pre-fixed airfare prices. Be sure to check your flight routes and general flight costs to see if you’re going to benefit from an air-pass.

Most round-the-world tickets you can buy for a set price and are usually good value. They do however come with some restrictions, such as you have to start and finish in the same place, have a limited number of stops, countries or air-miles and you have to fly in one direction without any backtracking. It’s always worth checking these RTW tickets out if you’re doing a number of flights in any given trip – they can save you a good deal of money as much as 30% on some of the more popular routes.

12. Book flights on a credit card

Book flights on a credit card as you get automatic financial protection. This means that if an Airline fails, goes bust or cancels your holiday the card provider will reimburse you. This only works on flights, accommodation and package deals costing between £100 and £30,000. Most if not all credit card providers wont cover for just flight bookings through third-party websites as they are only contracted to provide the tickets and not the flight.

Consider using an air-miles or cashback credit cards — we always book our flights on a rewards based credit card as the points can be used towards hotels stays, room upgrades and free flights.

Note – Be careful when booking flights with certain airlines especially budget ones as the can carry fees when paying by credit card.

13. Mix and Match

If you’re doing a return trip check the price for two single flights, one for each way, as even if you fly there with one airline and back with another as this can be cheaper than booking one return ticket.

When booking flights with a stopover also check how much it would cost you to book the two legs separate yourself as this can also work out cheaper. For example a flight from London to Perth via a stop off in Singapore could work out cheaper if you booked a flight from London to Singapore and then a separate flight from Singapore to Perth yourself. Don’t book flights with tight layovers though!

Consider adding another destination to your trip by turning a layover into a stopover, perhaps a few nights or more. This is a good way of breaking up a long-haul flight and adding on an extra place to visit.

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The method we use when booking our flights

When we come to booking flights we have a pretty good system in place. We always start with Skyscanner, we feel this is the most user friendly way of narrowing down the cheapest low fare routes as well as the cheapest dates to fly on.  Once we have the route and an idea of the dates we then search using the same parameters across Kayak, Momondo and Google.com/flights, this will give you the best possible chance of finding the lowest air-fare. The last thing we do is to check our chosen flight on the carriers own website, we also check for any cashback or coupons, yes even the big airlines offer out discount codes online!

We think Skyscanner is one of the most versatile flight search engines available! We’re not saying we only use Skyscanner but we nearly always start with it.

Here’s an example of how we would use Skyscanner to find cheap flights. We are selecting a flight from the UK to South Africa as an example and being flexible on the dates so we’re searching by month.

First of all select your departure point, we have selected the UK which will search from all the airports in the United Kingdom, you can narrow this down by entering a city or specific airport. Then in the To box enter your desired destination, again this can be done by country, city or airport. If you don’t have a destination in mind or require a little inspiration leave it blank and Skyscanner will search everywhere, returning a list of countries in order of the lowest airfare prices. Lastly click into the Depart box and select whole month in the drop down menu, we have chosen September as an example.

Skyscanner will then return the search starting with the cheapest arrival airports for your desired destination, in this case it’s Cape Town so we select this airport.

After this Skyscanner will list the cheapest departure airports so as London is pretty close to us and happens to be the cheapest  so we will go with that airport.

Finally Skyscanner will bring up airfares for the whole month with the selected airports, we find the quickest and easiest way to pinpoint the lowest travel dates is by switching from calendar to the chart view (as shown below). As you can see if you’re flexible with dates, and/or which airports you can fly from there’s a good chunk of money to be saved. If we where to fly on the 5th of September as a couple we would save around £300 when compared with other dates in that month.

We hope you’ve found these tips helpful and that you’ll save some of that hard-earned cash on your next flight. If we find out any additional ways to save money on flights during our round-the-world trip we’ll be sure to add them in to this post and share them!

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