How To Find Cheap Flights In 12 Easy Steps
Google will send you an email every time your tracked flights change prices.
On Skyscanner, you can select “get price alerts.” To set up an alert, search for your route and specific dates as usual, click the “bell sign,” and enter your email address. You’ll receive an email to confirm – simply click the link in the email, and you’re all set!
And on Kayak, you’ll get asked automatically if you want to set up a price alert as soon as you look for a flight!
You’ll also always see the website’s advice in the top left corner, which will suggest buy now, wait, or watch. Kayak will even estimate how much the airfare will rise or fall, helping you gauge whether or not it’s worth the risk.
5. Be Flexible
In your quest to find cheap flights, you need to be ready to be flexible in:
- When
- Where
When to book
When we book our vacation, we usually pick a destination first, decide when to go, and then check the price of the flights for those dates. This usually leads to finding flights that are more expensive than necessary.
If your top priority is to get cheap flights, you need to change your approach.
This is how:
Stop flying when everyone else is! If you are flying in the summer holidays or during Christmas, it will always be more expensive. Try to be flexible with the day of the week you are flying. Many people fly on Friday to avoid having to take an extra day of vacation, but this can cost you hundreds of dollars in airfare.
By changing your mindset, you could save a fortune.
Divine from Live and Earn in Canada
“As a travel blogger and a person that is always looking to save money, I am constantly on the lookout for tools and resources that I can use to cut costs. I am currently in the process of booking a family trip to the beautiful island of Mauritius, and tickets can be pretty expensive.
We will be traveling from Canada to Mauritius, and as a family of 3, ticket costs are anywhere between $4500 – $5000.
To save money on flights, we changed our travel dates significantly. Instead of traveling in July, we are saving over $1000 traveling in October. I also used Google Flights to help me track and pick dates where flight tickets are much cheaper (see tip #4). This allowed me to save an additional $350.”
Where: find the cheapest place to fly
If you love to travel and want to explore everywhere, you might not have limitations about where to go. If you don’t mind where you’ll end up, and you want to find the cheapest place to fly to, a few tools will come in handy.
My favorite:
Google Flights
1. Go to Google Flights, click on flights, and then on the map:
2. Put in your specific dates and home airport and find your best option!
Kiwi.com
Kiwi.com works pretty much the same way as Google Flights. Go on the website by clicking here, select your departure city and a date range to fly, and click on the “Explore” button. You will then see prices to fly to hundreds of destinations. You can just pick the cheapest flight to one of the places you’ve always wanted to visit!
Skyscanner
Skyscanner doesn’t have a map view, but its search engine is pretty good, so I recommend you always check it to find great deals.
1. Type in your departure city
2. Write “Anywhere” in the destination field.
3. Enter the dates you want to travel. Or you can even search by month!
You can now see a list of all the destinations you can travel to by country. You can then click on each country on the list and look for the best deal.
Kayak
Another favorite that uses the map search. The option I prefer here is Explore all.
1. Simply click on “Explore all” on the top right-hand corner of the map.
2. Select your home airport and your preferred time of flight. You can leave this blank if you are not sure. You will now be able to set your flight time (depending on how close you want to stay or how far you want to go) and your budget.
3. Move the map around until you find a destination that you want to explore.
TIP OF THE DAY: Always check for airports that might not be the obvious choice. Smaller airports or airports that are only an extra hour’s drive from home might save you hundreds of dollars!
6. Go local
If you are booking with an airline from another country, always check the price in the destination currency. You might find differences closer to hundreds of dollars!
Many airlines offer cheap prices for locals, but make sure you check your credit card fees for foreign transaction fees and exchange rates, or you could lose all the savings!
Make sure you use a VPN connection when looking at local websites.
A VPN provides an encrypted tunnel for your internet connection, keeping your online travels safe from prying eyes. All of your online activities are protected by the layer of encryption, and you will be able to select which “country” you are browsing from.
I use TunnelBear, and it’s excellent! It has an app and a chrome extension. The first 500MB of data is free every month, and if you send a tweet out to share Tunnel Bear, you get another 500MB on top (1GB of data).
I’ve been using the free version for over two years and never had to upgrade!
7. Find the best time to book
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