Travel Hack: Searching for Cheap Flights Like a Pro

Posted on by Katie

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Airplane Flights are getting expensive these days and it’s really hard to find any cheap flights. Searching for cheap flights can be tiresome. There are some unfair airlines out there that raises their prices with every refresh on your browser. And hundreds of sites that are claiming to be the best cheap flight search engines are harder to differentiate to those sites that actually offer great flight deals.

Below, we are going to teach you how to search for cheap flights effectively without wasting your time.

  1. Choose the best cheap flight search engines

  • Instead of going around hundreds of sites to find the best cheap flights, Skyscanner is the best one to go. Skyscanner is a fully customizable flight search engine to find the right plane just for you. In seconds, you’ll be presented with hundreds of flights from your designated starting point that’s organized by price. Besides planes, Skyscanner can also help you find the best car rental deals and hotel deals.

  1. Base your destination on the current flight market

  • So what does this even mean? Simple, it means to set your destination based on what’s currently the cheapest. Using Skyscanner, you can see all the cheapest flights from your destination city to everywhere around the world.

  1. Check for flights on dates based on your selected dates

  • Flight prices may vary depending on the date. You may be surprised that the prices is increasing day after day after day. So when searching for cheap flights, you can always rely on the Skyscanner Calendar to see the price variations from day to day. With Skyscanner’s calendar, you can tweak your dates to accommodate the current flight market and score deals.

  1. Search for airport/cities around your destination

  • With the flexibility in dates the Skyscanner calendar can offer which saves your wallet from breaking apart, Skyscanner can also help you with airports. Different cities have different airports. And different airports have different flight deals. So instead of booking a flight in your city’s airport, you can use Skyscanner to scan airports nearby outside your city. We never know, they might offer some cheaper deals than the ones that is inside your city.

  1. Long Layovers is Your Best Friend

  • Long layovers can really test our patience, but if you want to save a lot of money, long layovers can definitely help you. It doesn’t matter if you’re having a flight stop from one city to another, and then to another city until you reached your destination. These long layovers can actually be a mini-trip in disguise. But If you don’t want such long layovers, you can use Skyscanner’s customizable toolbar to filter results depending on the travel time length. This can help opt out those long layover flights and see the ones you only need.

  1. Do Things Your Own Way: Make Your Own Layover

  • If you want to do things on your own way, you can make your own layovers instead. It is definitely cheaper to book each leg of your trip on your own rather than booking an identical travel route as one package with built-in layovers. You can save a ton of cash by splitting your flights in this way. But better make sure to check luggage requirements of these discounted airlines. And if you ever feel like you need more luggage, you can buy it online in-advance to save money. Just make sure to carry what you only needed to avoid heavy luggage.

  1. Go Incognito When Searching for Cheap Flights

  • Some cheap flight for engines can track your browser cookies. As a result, they can identify recent searches that you made. Once they have this data, these sites will raise their prices higher to make you hurry up and input that credit card info! To avoid this, always clear your browser history and cookies regularly. Or for better security without the hassle of clearing, you can switch to incognito mode while searching for cheap flights. You can find this feature in almost any browser that’s available on the web.

  1. Pick the Best Time to Book Your Ticket

  • Flight prices can magically fluctuate that you can’t even notice. So when’s the best time to book your ticket? The answer is, “54 days” before your intended flight. You know what they say: The earlier you book, the cheapest you get. Back in 2015, this was the best time to buy flight tickets based on a study by Cheapair. To even find more great deals, you can book a flight even before 54 days. Another alternative is aiming for the “Prime Booking Window”. But when is this prime booking window? It’s actually 21-112 days before your intended flight. During this time period, it’s good to check flight fares more often (don’t forget to turn on incognito) and use Skyscanner’s fare alerts to notify you about price drops. When you finally find that price you’ve been looking for, wait no more and book it!

  1. Plan ahead: Subscribe to airline/airfare-watch email lists

  • We probably mentioned Skyscanner a lot of times during this article for the best flight searches. But how about a website for receiving travel alerts? Don’t worry as there are a lot of travel sites that can accommodate you with that. There’s Yapta, TripAdvisor airfare alerts, TravelZoo, and also AirFareWatchdog. These sites can give you the best flight deals that you don’t want to miss.

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