7 Tips for Saving Money on Flights

When I first started my solo travel adventures I was exclusively taking road trips. To be honest I was attached to the safety and security that my car provided and I was afraid to take a flight anywhere and depend on public transportation. This past January, I finally took the leap. Boom! I planned a 19 day European excursion. The following are tips that I currently use or am aware of for saving money on flights:

This post may contain (totally does) affiliate links. At no additional cost to you I may receive a small commission when you purchase a product or use my link. Ya girl got bills ya’ll.

 

Try using skyscanner

(Compare prices on flights with Skyscanner)

Skyscanner is a true god send. I primarily use it for booking flights but you can also find deals on hotels (Great deals for hotels, apartments and hostels with Skyscanner.) and rental cars as well.(Great deals on wheels with Skyscanner car rentals). What I love about Skyscanner is that you are able to put in your dates and desired location and skyscanner does all the work. It will find you the cheapest ticket that the internet has to offer. The flight may not always be the shortest but I have been able to find unbelievable deals.

My favorite aspect of Skyscanner is being able to leave my destination blank. This way Skyscanner will give me a list of the cheapest tickets available during the time frame that I designate. I have two examples of how this feature has worked out for me. In January of 2018 I flew to Europe. Not only did I book my original ticket through Skyscanner (from Houston to Athens) but I was also able to find two other tickets on the website as well. I got a $35 ticket from Athens to Sofia, Bulgaria. I was also able able to get a $57 ticket from Athens to Rome.

One benefit of using Skyscanner is that they do not use cookies. Have you even been on a site (like Priceline) and you check for a ticket and then magically the site starts to show you more and more expensive tickets? You then start to find the ticket cheaper is other places? Yeah, that’s the cookies snitching on you. You can find a tip to avoid that below. Not to worry, Skyscanner won’t do you like that.

Research your ticket incognito

Most of the time that I am searching for flights and hotels I will make sure that I engage my browsers “privacy browsing”. This way different sites are unable to track what I am researching. On the back end of this you can continue to find the cheaper tickets that are available. If you don’t want to use the privacy browsing then you should make sure to delete your browsing history after you have been searching for ticket prices.

Take advantage of a layover

So this is a trick that definitely has some pitfalls and really only works for a one way ticket. This is how it works…. Let’s say that you live in NYC and want to travel to Chicago. You may be able to find a super cheap ticket on an airline from NYC to Denver that has a layover in Chicago. Instead of booking the direct ticket, you will select the ticket with the layover. Once you get to Chicago you just don’t get on the flight to Denver.

The reason that this only works on a one way ticket is that some airlines will cancel a return flight if they see that you didn’t actually reach the destination on your ticket. There is also no guarantee that a return flight will end up stopping in that same city. You need to make sure that your airline doesn’t have any “no show” fees. They may try to charge you for not completing the flight. If this isn’t the case then you may be able to save yourself a few bucks with this tip.

You also want to make sure that you aren’t going to run into any sort of immigration or tourist issues. This may be a tip best left to traveling within a country. You don’t want to look suspicious by booking a ticket to another country and not showing up there but instead staying in a different country.

Either book super early or last minute

I try to plan my travel several months in advanced but that doesn’t mean that I book all of my tickets that early. There really are two options for the right time to buy a ticket. You can book months in advance or you can try to find a last minute deal. I recently traveled to Las Vegas from Denver. I was in the middle of a Colorado road trip and wanted to celebrate a new work opportunity. I was able to get my my ticket plus a checked bag each way ($70 in total), for about $124. This includes taxes and travel insurance. It was a pretty good deal and I booked it about a week before the flight.

be flexible about when you travel

When it comes to saving money on travel, especially for getting good flight deals, you have to be flexible. I am mostly talking about the time of year but also about the airlines that you use, the number of bags you need, and also where you are going. There is a reason that I went to Greece in January. The tickets are cheaper. The same flight that cost me less than $700 in winter costs over $1200 during the summer time. There are also more tourists, food prices can go up, and so can tickets for museums and souvenirs. For a majority of my time there I was able to walk around in a light jacket or shirt and I could still put my toes in the water.

You can also find cheaper tickets by flying out of different cities that my be close to you and also with different airlines. My next European trip I plan to use Norwegian Airlines and fly out of Austin instead of Houston. This is solely for the fact that I can save hundreds of dollars by flying out of a different city. When booking a flight try to see if a nearby city has a cheaper ticket and if getting to that location is feasible for you.

Book directly with the airline

In my experience I have found that it is typically cheaper to book through a third party but this isn’t always the case. I am a member of several newsletters for airlines such as Spirit, Southwest, and American. There are times when my inbox will show a deal that I can book directly with an airline. I also make sure that I double check any prices that I find on a third party site through the airline. If you have any sort of member profile with an airline then you can also build points. This can come in hand later to pay for flights or perhaps even cover the cost of checked bags.

Join a rewards program or get a travel credit card

While I was flying with Spirit Airlines they were offering a 1,000 miles just to apply for a credit card. Now this is of course an opportunity that not everyone wants to take advantage of but they do exist. There are plenty of travel credit cards out there that allow you to build points and use those points for tickets or getting hotels. While I don’t have one of these credit cards I am a member of several rewards programs with different airlines. When I book a ticket with that airline I am able to then build points that will allow me to pay for other flights in the future.

There you have it! Here are 7 different tips that you can use to save money when booking a flight.