How to find cheap flights ? | Booking Flights Tips

Buying plane tickets can easily be the most expensive part of your trip, especially if you are flying longer distances. There is a strategy to finding cheap flights and cheap flights are out there if you know how to look for them. You’ll just need a little patience. Sometimes I track the same flight for months before actually purchasing a ticket watching the prices for a better deal. There is nothing worse than seeing a cheap flights than going to book it a day later only to find the price has increased, or vice versa.

My rule of thumb is if I see a cheap deal — I book it on the spot. I never plan trips or book flights too far in advance.

However, this past summer, as I was just browsing through flights, I found a flight from Dubai to Manilla during spring break for only $110 roundtrip! Considering that it is a direct flight and about an eight-hour journey, that seemed like a steal. I ended up booking it right on the spot. That’s a cheaper plane ticket than flying between most cities in the US! I just couldn’t pass up the amazingly cheaper deal.

You can see in this picture, the different airlines being compared via their prices

Using third party websites like these are almost always cheaper than booking directly through the airline. But beware, if you need to change your flight for any reason, it can be more complicated to do so.

One of my favorite things about Skyscanner is instead of choosing an exact date, you can choose “whole month of…” and insert the month you are planning to travel, or even “cheapest month” and it will search the cheapest date in your chosen month to fly, or the cheapest day in the whole year to fly to your chosen destination.

Another cool feature is if you are on a tight budget, or are just adventurous and want to go somewhere random, you can select “everywhere” as your destination and it will show you the cheapest place to fly from your departing city on the selected dates.

You may end up going to someplace you never would have thought about seeing! It’s a super fun feature to try if you are a flexible traveler.

Flights with layovers are usually significantly cheaper than direct flights, especially for international travel. Looking at the above photo, notice the direct flight to New York with Emirates Airline is $1,377, compared to the Turkish Airlines flight with a two-hour layover in Istanbul for only $786. This is a lot more do-able if you’re a backpacker like me with a tight budget. The extra money you saved on your flight (all $600 of it!) can now be used for activities, food, accommodation, etc.

Flight prices fluctuate, sometimes by hundreds of dollars, depending on the day. When working with a flexible schedule, booking a flight a day or two later than originally planned could save you a ton. Though this is not always possible, it’s definitely something to consider when planning on a budget. Not only can you try being flexible on dates, but also on airports. The bigger and well-known airports are sometimes more expensive compared to smaller airports nearby. 

For example, flying into JFK in New York City is almost always more expensive than flying through EWR in Newark, New Jersey, which are only 20 miles apart (or 33 KM) and are easily accessible to each other by car or bus! Sometimes the small inconvenience of a smaller or further airport can be worth it. When entering your destination in the flight finder, make sure to put New York as a whole instead of specifically JFK. That way it will compare all flights also going to nearby airports such as EWR and LGA airports. For smaller countries, you can add the country as a whole into the destination option on the website. For example, instead of looking specifically at Los Angeles or Chicago, just searching The United States will show the cheapest flight to any US city from your departing city (see picture below).

Unless you find a killer deal, avoid booking flights too far in advance. This means anything more than three or so months away from the present day. After stalking flight routes for months and, I have had the best luck at prices about 4-12 weeks before my departure date. The further away from your travel date, the higher the price usually is. As the date gets closer, airlines are trying to fill those leftover seats, causing the price to lower substantially. I know an upcoming trip can be very exciting, but I urge you to wait until a few weeks before to try and score the better deal.

Word on the street is if you book your flights on specific days of the week, such as Tuesday or Wednesday, flights can be a little cheaper. I can not confirm whether this is actually true, as this has never worked for me personally. But it’s another tip I encourage you to test out for yourself.

Good luck with booking your flight and happy travels!!! You are one more step closer to having a life-changing experience and I PROMISE you will not regret it!