If you want to travel by air, you should be saving money. After all, flight companies are suffering financially, and many airlines have gone out of business in the past years. The remaining ones have increased ticket fares and decreased the number of planes in the air. You may think this makes it harder to get a good travel deal, but it doesn’t.
In all honesty, to get the best flight deals all you have to do is compare flight prices. Price comparing is the easiest and the fastest way to save money, but there are other factors to consider, of course.
1. Compare flight prices to get the best flight deals on airline websites
When you are trying to find the best flight deals, you will first go to the websites of well-known airlines. These are the flight companies you know and trust, but they aren’t the only options out there. Look at all the airlines that service the airport you’re flying out from and the one(s) available at your destination. After you find the airlines that service both your take-off and landing cities, it’s time to head to their websites. Compare flight prices to find the best flight deals.
2. Search for the best flight deals on third-party travel websites
After getting the best flight deals available on the official airline websites, perform a search on travel websites. Usually, it’s cheaper to book a flight directly through the airline. However, there are times when travel websites come with better prices as part of marketing campaigns or travel packages. This can be the case of a local travel agency’s website, where they have a deal for a specific destination to sell roundtrip cheap plane tickets.
Other times, you can get cheap flights with discount retail agencies that specialize in trips to multiple destinations. They can command a pretty good discount thanks to the huge number of plane tickets that they manage to sell.
It only takes a few minutes to check the offers on several travel websites, so why not give it a try?
3. Try to be flexible with your travel dates
When you compare flight prices, try to be as flexible as you can with your dates or arrival and departure. Luckily, almost all official airline websites and travel websites allow you to select an option to include in your search one or two days before or after your provided dates. You may see big differences between Friday and Saturday flights, for example.
Oh, and when I say flexible, you should also consider different times of the year, as well. To get the best flight deals, take low season travel into account, too.
4. If you can, be flexible about take-off and landing spots, too
Your departure may be from a place like Paris or some other city serviced by more than one airport. Consider including all of them in your search for the best flight deals. Of course, it would be more convenient to depart from the closest airport. But what if choosing another airport meant saving 100$?
Always compare airport options when possible. You will be surprised by the price differences between airports located less than an hour away from each other.
5. Wait for the final cost before jumping up with joy
Unfortunately, the first price you see is usually bait, and it’s quite different from the final one. Many times, offers don’t cover return trips, but only one-way tickets. And they usually don’t include things like the luggage fee and airport tax, either. The latter can end up costing more than the discounted ticket price itself, so your cheap flight might not be so budget-friendly after all. To avoid any unpleasant mishaps, make sure to read the small print and understand what exactly you’re getting for that price.
Another trick is to display the smaller price which is available for low season travel only. And, once you click on that offer and pick your travel dates, you can get a quote that can be double the price displayed in the ad!
So before claiming you found the best flight deals, check out the final cost!
Mirela Letailleur is a Romanian travel blogger living in the South of France. She writes on The Travel Bunny travel blog about affordable travel in Europe, creator of unique free travel guides, local travel expert. Problem solver. Wannabe coffee guru.
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