The Definitive Guide to Find Cheap Flights

Travel doesn’t have to be expensive, yet, it is the only thing you buy that makes you richer, but again, airfares are often expensive.

That’s right! Since air transportation costs contributes to a significant amount on your travel expenses, searching for that cheap killer deal can be just as important as finding the right destination for your trip, the right ground transportation or insurance plan, or the most appropriate place or area for your stay. Because, if the airfare for your destination is over your budget, you aren’t going anywhere – and today I am going to help you become a Jack of all the airfare trades, based on my experience in airline sales. Whenever I plan a trip, I make sure I follow all these steps, and if you too follow them, you’ll never end up being the person who paid the highest fare on your flight!

1. Don’t search everyday

There is conclusive evidence to suggest that airline companies keep records of your flight searches and gradually push the fares up the more you search to force you into buying before the fares “increase” further. These dynamic pricing decisions are often quite complex because they have to factor many variables to determine an optimum fare. Most of the airline reservation systems are highly sophisticated and intelligent enough to sense if the demand for a particular flight or route increases; so should the price. And it can dynamically adjust that. So if you search for a flight more than a couple of times in a week you will be targeted.

2. Don’t pay attention to folklores

Many travel blogs often suggest a particular day better in terms of the price than the other to choose to travel or buy flight tickets. But let me tell you, those days are long gone, and it is NOT cheaper to buy your flight tickets or travel on a Tuesday. No longer clearing your browser cookies work after a search – or turn on incognito mode for anonymous browsing to find cheaper fares; like I’ve mentioned earlier, airline reservation systems are smarter nowadays. Not only they record flight searches based on IP addresses, but these systems track multiple searches for the same route, date and flight, and it responds with increments in fares to everyone searching the same route, date and flight nevertheless of the location the search is originating from.

3. Search with Anytime & Date Range

Let’s say I want to travel to Nairobi from Mumbai but didn’t care when; I just want to know the cheapest available fare so that I can plan my trip accordingly. Okay, so here’s when people talk about how expensive air travel is, they are right in so many ways but often they don’t know about some of the amazing tools available online to help them fly cheaper. If your schedule is flexible, KIWI lets you search for flights “anytime” or over a set range of dates, it also lets you search for flights over no specific dates and a specific duration. You can also specify how long you would like your total trip to be, so if you know you will take a 10-15 day vacation in summer, you can search for flights in a date range from June to August, and then select your “Time of stay” to be 10 to 14 nights. This way you can figure out not only where your cheapest holiday option is, but also when and for how long.

4. Go direct to the airlines

Once you have used KIWI or another travel fare aggregator website as suggested above and found a cheap fare for your intended destination, go directly to that airline’s official website and see if you can get it even cheaper. Many airlines have lower fares only available on their own website.

5. No travel fare aggregator website is perfect

No travel fare aggregator website is consistently perfect and gets the cheapest flight 100% of the time. You’ll just have to try a combination of different websites to ensure you’re not missing any results. Some people believe that travel fare aggregator website such as KIWI, Skyscanner or Momondo always lead to an online travel agent (OTA) with the lowest airfares.

6. Search for flights from the departing airport’s website

While travel fare aggregator websites are a great way to find cheap flights, they do not always include small airlines, especially Low-Cost carriers (LCC) and flights that operate in less popularly booked routes or remote regions. These low-cost carriers try to keep their costs down by not paying a booking commission to  travel fare aggregator websites.

Let’s say, you want to fly from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh in Cambodia, and you’ve searched Skyscanner and several other travel fare aggregator websites and still couldn’t find a domestic flight that meets your requirement in terms of price or the departure time. Now go have a look at the Siem Reap International Airport website, from 25th March to 28th October 2018, you’ll see Bassaka Air, Cambodia Angkor Air, Cambodia Bayon Airlines, JC Airlines, Lanmei Airlines and Sky Angkor Airlines flying from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh. From here you check with the airlines’ official website or inquire a travel agent for a fare.

7. Don’t search for error fares

Again, many travel blogs suggest taking advantage of error fares, glitches that occur due to currency conversion mishaps, technical issues, or human error, leading an online airfare turn significantly lower than its regular price. AirFare Watchdog and Secret Flying are some of the popular online resources to stalk for finding error fares. But, the question is, how long will an error fare last before you discover it, and will the particular route of the error fare be appropriate for your trip and destination, more importantly will the airline just let you to fly on a mistakenly filed fare that you have taken advantage of that will affect their revenue for a particular flight?

8. Identify the cheapest modes of payment for your flight tickets

Suppose you want to fly from Malé to Kuala Lumpur with AirAsia and the fare is $281.50, but if you’re purchasing it with your debit or credit card from their website, they charge a $12 processing fee. You can avoid these processing fees, now that AirAsia lets you pay using Bigpay electronic wallet which could be linked to your Mastercard through the BigPay app and could be topped up from your debit or credit cards.

9. Pay for your flight tickets on installments

Speaking of credit cards, what about those of us that have a history of paying our debts late or are just starting out? This is where Airfordable comes in. It allows you to upload a screenshot of the travel details from your favorite airline or travel fare aggregator website. Next, you secure your ticket with a deposit and pay the rest in an installment plan before your departure date. You will receive your e-ticket after the completion of the final payment of the installment plan and Airfordable guarantees price protection so the price of your flight ticket doesn’t increase.

10. Travel agents are not the bad guys always

Contrary to claims on social media, travel agents are not always money hungry and they don’t always rip you off. In fact, many travel agencies have special deals and agreements with the airlines they represent for a particular sales territory where they are allowed to sell fares cheaper than anything you will find on the internet. Sometimes, these agreements also include a clause where a travel agency is given the responsibilities of conducting ground handling for an airline at a particular destination, and also allows the travel agency to represent the airlines’ general sales agent. Given these circumstances, the chances of a cheaper fare available online are relatively low as an airline appointed travel agency is also liable to manage a full-fledged ticketing office with staff and generate sufficient sales to meet their expenditure and airline set targets. Again, this doesn’t mean all travel agencies offer better fares than that you will find online, and you should always do your research online before approaching a travel agent.

11. Sign up for airlines newsletters

None of us likes receiving spam in our inbox, but you’ll have to trust me – you need to have them in your inbox and read them. Sign up for e-mail newsletters from airlines and  travel fare aggregator websites to get updates about all the last-minute or special deals that are happening. There are several occasions where a killer deal is only available for 24 hours, and if you aren’t staying up to date with these newsletters, you’re likely to miss it.

12. Use social media to keep yourself up to date with special offers and competitions!

Follow the social media channels of your favorite airlines to keep yourself updated on post exclusive and last minute deals before they send them out in newsletters. Sometimes, due to inventory reasons, these deals may be sold out before you even receive through the airline’s newsletter.

13. Fares for a particular route from two sales cities may not be the same!

Suppose you want to fly from Malé to Doha via Colombo with SriLankan Airlines, and you already have a Malé – Colombo return ticket with SriLankan Airlines or a different airline, so you just need to purchase the Colombo – Doha return ticket. But, you’ll have to understand that the fares are different when issuing the ticket with a travel agent in both the cities, Malé and Colombo.

If you compare the above two itineraries and its fare breakdown, you’ll see that the total amount in Example 1 is $529.70 while the amount in Example 2 is $589.70. There is a difference of $60 (Sri Lanka Overseas Sales Surcharge – EJ). This means if you are issuing this itinerary from a Colombo based travel agent, you will be paying $529.70, however, if you are issuing the same from a travel agent outside Sri Lanka, the  $60 (Sri Lanka Overseas Sales Surcharge – EJ) will be incorporated into the total airfare. You can use ITA Matrix to research fares, it is one of the most efficient flight search engines available on the Internet, and was developed by MIT computer scientists in 1996. While you can’t book a ticket through ITA Matrix, you can find your perfect flight there, and then use that information to make your purchase online or through a travel agent. You can easily reduce unnecessary costs on return flights by doing just this much more research.

Do you have any tricks to share on saving big on flights? Share any tips in the comments below!