Are airfare costs are keeping you from booking a trip?
Are you sure you're getting the best available fares?
Keep this article within arm's reach next time you plan a trip to quickly find cheap flights online. Even if you have no issue with what you pay for airfare, odds are others are getting better fares on the very same flights, due to a combination of the following strategies:
A Common Mistake that Costs You Money When Booking Flights is deciding where and when to go before looking up airfares. The problem with this seemingly innocent approach is that you emotionally commit yourself to an itinerary that is likely to cost much more than equally satisfying alternatives.
Regardless of what website, strategy or tricks you use, the following illustration shows where the cheap flights are, and why you aren't getting them:
You may think you're being flexible by departing at 6am to save a few dollars. Maybe you're willing to shift your vacation ahead or delay it by a few days to save a bit more. Truth is, any savings you get this way hardly scratches the surface of how cheap flights can be when you really open up your options.
Let's say you want to escape the cold every winter for a beach vacation. If you give yourself a four-month window (flexible on dates), and are equally open to the Caribbean, Mexico and South-East Asia (flexible on destination), you will open doors to the sorts of jaw dropping flight deals you will rave about, and your friends will envy.
Best Time to Book Flights for Cheap Flights
People will have you believe there's a magic time to book travel to get the cheapest flights. Don't buy into this myth. Reality is, millions of people have varying travel plans and there are just too many moving parts to have a one-size fits all best time to book travel for best fares.
Lucky for you, there are free online tools that crunch data specific to your desired itinerary, and they tell you how and when the best fares will be available as follows:
- If Your Travel Dates Are Firm: The Hopper app. and Kayak.com crunch historical flight data specific to your itinerary, and not only tell you the best fare available now, but whether the price is likely to rise or drop with time, and if so, when and by how much. These forecasts are based on historical data, so they cannot account for current events (airline strikes, fuel prices). Still, it's valuable intelligence to have when deciding whether to hold off for a better fare.
- If Your Travel Dates Are Flexible and it doesn't matter to you whether you visit Paris in 6 months, next year or in two years' time. There are websites where you can enter your desired flight route along with the most you are willing to pay, then the website continuously searches for flights meeting your criteria, and send you a notification anytime it finds a match. AirfareWatchdog.com, FareCompare.com and Yapta.com all do this, and I recommend you setup e-alerts for all cities you want to visit, and that you get aggressive with your price ceilings. This way, you're giving yourself options and can prioritize your trips to cities with filler airfare deals. This also buys the website time to find killer fares to your other bucket list cities.
Finding Cheap Flights - When You Aren't Flexible:
1. No single website returns the best fares every time. So, run your search through three or more websites. I use Kayak.com, Skyscanner.com, and Momondo.com, but I also know many people who swear by Google.com/fights and Matrix.itasoftware.com. We won't break these websites down into detail, but you should experiment with them all, and try to keep a given flight search to 15 minutes.
If you aren't crazy about the fares in your search results:
2. Toggle between one-way and round-trip as airlines sometimes charge different fares each way.
3. Consider flying each way on separate airlines. You can easily look into these options using Kayak.com as their search engine automatically mixes and matches different airlines to get you the best fare each way.
4. Expand your search to include all neighboring airports. I am certainly willing to drive 3 hours if it nets 0 in savings.
5. When flying abroad, run your search through at least one airfare search engine based in your destination country. For example, when traveling to Europe, CheckFelix.com/uk allows you toggle between countries, and converts your airfare to that countrys' currency. Now you can compare the relative price by factoring the currency differential, and you can book your flight in the currency that gives you the lowest overall price:
*If you do this: Pay for your flight using a credit card with a 'No Foreign Transaction Fee' benefit. For a list of credit cards that waive foreign transaction fees, Click Here.
6. Before you book a flight on a search engine, go to the website of the airline you will be flying on. If the airlines' website has the same fare, book direct with the airline to cut out any third party terms and conditions which cause complications when issues arise.
"What if Prices Drop After I Book my Flight?"
If the airline's fare is higher than the one you found elsewhere, you may be able to game any of the following policies the airline may have:
- Best Price Guarantees are where airlines match better fares found elsewhere for an identical itinerary.
- Price Drop Refund Policies refund the difference between what you paid, and a subsequent price drop.
An issue with these policies is that the onus is on you to submit a claim (slimy I know). Fortunately, Yapta.com has a free service where you key your flight itinerary and price paid, and if the price for your itinerary later drops to a level that entitles you to a refund, Yapta notifies you to contact the airline to claim your refund:
*Did You Know: Anytime an airline notifies you of even the slightest change to your booked itinerary, that's your gateway to get out of your booking altogether at no charge. Simply call the airline when you get a change notification, and say the change does not suit you, and that you want to cancel - which they will do at no charge when it's due to an itinerary change initiated by the airline.
Beat the Best Online Fare - Every Time, Every Flight
Some airlines not only offer price drop refunds, but also give you flight credits on top of the refund for you to use toward future flights. A number of airlines that offer this benefit, but the terms vary by airline. So, I break down step-by-step how to game the system and claim these credits in a FREE guide you can download from the homepage of BreakTheTravelBarrier.com:
Ultra-Low Cost (ULC) Airlines
If you play the ULC airline game right, your flying future is going to be a lot less expensive. Budget airlines generally work like this: Your base fare entitles you to a seat, the space under it for a bag, and washroom access. Anything else costs extra, from printed boarding passes, use of overhead bins, water and snacks, priority boarding priority boarding and seat selection - except for Southwest where you choose your seat as you board. Airlines operating this way include Spirit and Southwest (U.S.), Flair, SWOOP and Jetlines (Canada), and abroad you have AirAsia, Norwegian, Ryan Air and Icelandic Air.
Challenges Comparing ULC Fares v.s. Traditional Fares:
- In-flight discretionary surcharges can quadruple your base ULC fare.
- ULC airlines are excluded from most search engines as their pricing models are not easily compared to standard fares. Visit the website of your departing airport to find ULC airlines that fly your desired route.
Comparing ULC fares to traditional posted rates requires you to factor in all surcharges you anticipate incurring on an ULC flight. Personally, I feel ULC airlines are best flown for short haul flights for a short escape where you won't be on the plane long, and can fit everything you bring under your seat.
Where to Find Cheap Flights
I am a regular radio guest where I call in from home, and I am commonly asked what the best flight deals are out of that city. These are sometimes places I have not been to or spent little time in. Fortunately, I am connected to a network of travel deal newsletters and Facebook pages solely devoted to finding and broadcasting jaw dropping flight deals. I list the ones I follow in my article Where to Find the Best Travel Deals.
Credit Card Travel Rewards
Since all travel is booked online, you have to have a credit card. In fact, I recommend you travel with two cards, and that you keep them separate to lessen the likelihood of losing them both at the same time.
With so many travel rewards credit cards to choose from - each with different benefits - it can be overwhelming trying to figure out which ones are best for you. I recommend you first identify 3 common travel credit card benefits that you most desire, and get the card that has the best combination of those benefits. Then do the same for your second card, but this time choose three other benefits not offered by your first card. You can quickly narrow down which cards have the best combination of benefits for you using the credit card travel rewards matrix in this article where I compare the benefits of the top travel rewards credit cards.
If you follow these strategies, you will hands down land better fares over people who don't. And should we ever cross paths on a plane, I look forward to seeing who paid the least. Meantime...
Here's to Inexpensive Flights!
Once feeling unable to afford to travel, Russell Hannon uses lean principles to travel at a fraction of the going rate. He has been featured on CNBC, FOX, CBS, America Tonight, CTV, CBC, Around the World Travel TV and nationally broadcast lifestyle and personal finance shows. He also wrote 'Stop Dreaming Start Traveling: The Ultimate Guide to Traveling More and Spending Less'.
Russell Hannon - January 28, 2020
