How To Find Cheap Flights? 10 Best Proven Methods [2024]

Are you planning vacations and looking for some tips on how to find cheap flight tickets? This article is for you if you have no idea about this

Opting for a flight is undoubtedly the best way to travel, but sometimes flight tickets can burn a big hole in your budget. Your travel budget is better if you can cut down on your flight ticket prices.

There are certain ways you can significantly reduce the pricing for your flights.

In this article, we are going to discuss the ways that might help you find better deals, discounts, and more to help you optimize your travel budget to the fullest.

List of 10 tricks on How to Find cheap flights

Below are some of the tested and practical ways to find cheap flight tickets.

Always be ahead of time
Check prices for different airports
Best days to book your travels
Using a VPN to search flights
Mix your airliner choice
Set up your price alerts
Sign up for rewards programs
Search for Solo tickets
Make sure you search every available airline
Choosing the budget airlines

1. Always be ahead of time

Booking a flight at your last moment is not at all a good idea. It will affect your judgment and also reduce the number of options that you would otherwise have. If you are a traveller, you know that planning ahead of time is always the best strategy.

For flight bookings, the statement is of immense importance too, since there are always “sweet spots” or special time frames where you might get your tickets at incredibly reduced rates.

According to a very recent analysis for 2021, if you are opting for international travel, booking your flight ticket at least 8 to 10 months ahead of time will let you opt for the best rates.

A flight booking near the month of festivals like Thanksgiving will attract significantly higher rates than a flight booked for the same day, around 110 days ago.

If you want to travel in the colder seasons, it’s best to book your flight about 100 days before.

For springtime travel, the booking sweet spot would be around 75-78 days before, for summertime, the flight booking sweet spot lies around 40-45 days ahead, and in the fall, the best discounts can be obtained around 75-80 days before.

2. Check prices for different airports

If your city offers multiple airports, or you have access to different airports, you should check out the rates on Google Flights for all flights available to your destination from the different airports. Most times, you will find a deal that is significantly cheaper than the rest.

3. Best days to book your travels

People trying to find the best days to book their travel manually, like in case of short notice travels, would be at a loss and will waste time.

It is not humanly possible to know the incredible amount of constantly changing data regarding every possible flight and service.

That is why you should take advantage of an app called Hopper which is free, and that is not even the best part.

Hopper gives you a visual color-coded calendar that takes into account the recent available flights and pricing from various airlines and sites to serve the best possible rates.

Generally, the first flight of the day, around 6 a.m. is possibly the cheapest, and the flights at official business times are the priciest.

Also, flight ticket prices depend on various factors throughout the day, including odd situations like cancellations, delays, and unexpected lower footfalls.

4. Using a VPN to search flights

While most people think going incognito browsing for cheaper airfares is an option, it is a myth because airlines do not increase their fares depending on your search history.

Using a VPN is a different matter entirely. VPN will mask your IP Address, and thus, you can search for flight fares to and from your destination, but you are telling the airline website, that you belong to a different region or country.

If you search by setting your IP to a low-income country, you will possibly find reduced rates since airlines always try to attract more international travellers to opt for their services.

5. Mix your airliner choice

To make your travelling even cheaper, consider booking your tickets with multiple airlines. You can book your ticket with one airline and your return ticket with another, this way, you can take advantage of any discounts offered by those airlines individually.

It costs you way less than what you would get if you booked both of your tickets solely with a single airline.

With KIWI, you can see the best rates available, if you want to book your tickets for both ways but with different airlines.

Online web services like Priceline & Expedia also allow you to book package deals that might include your both-way tickets, your rental car booking, and your hotel bookings at heavily discounted prices.

Some of the segments available in the packages might also be fully refundable.

6. Set up your price alerts

It is impossible to visit each flight booking website of your choice and see prices manually and hope for a discount.

Always set up price alerts to get notified each time there is a discount available. Google Flights and other booking services might get you the deal you were waiting for.

7. Sign up for rewards programs

The airline rewards card/Airline credit card program is probably one of the best ways to earn discounted flight tickets or even free tickets for your travels.

If you are a card user, you will have accumulated enough points and miles that you can redeem for a big discount on your tickets, hotel booking, flight upgrades, access to various lounges, and a lot more.

Exchanging reward points and miles accumulated on your various reward programs, are probably the easiest way to access discounted fares.

8. Search for Solo tickets

More often than not, airlines charge more for booking multiple tickets together, than for individual tickets.

For example, if an individual seat costs you $150, a booking of four seats in a single go, will cost you way more than $600 (i.e. 4x$150).

Booking seats together results in you obtaining all the seats that are located beside, or near each other. You can try booking individual seats, manually and save a few bucks that way.

You can take advantage of the website called SeatGuru which lets you see the available seats on a flight, helping you select seat numbers that are near each other manually.

9. Make sure you search every available airline

Some airlines do not wish to list their fares on fare comparison sites or even search engines.

The reasons might be they do not want to share commissions with any other booking portals, or they have limited operations.

Southwest Airlines has one of the lowest ticket prices, but they do not share their prices with other sites. In these cases, you need to go to their site directly to look up the price list.

10. Choosing the budget airlines

Small airline services are operating in almost every major country in the world. These small private / government-owned airlines can offer you some of the cheapest travel prices, but you might compromise on different related services like food and that extra legroom.

Be careful that these cheap tickets mostly do not cover any extra services like check-in luggage, airport check-in fee, etc.

Take into account every fee that you have to pay if you opt for these airlines. Sometimes, the total fee might easily exceed what you would have paid, if you opted to travel with a well-known airline service instead. If, you see that you are making significant savings, only then go for these budget airlines.

Conclusion

Cheaper flight tickets are not that easy to come by, but if you know the right places to search for, it will be worth the time. It is always good to take advice from friends or family or individuals who have prior experiences with travel as they can at least let you know the average ticket prices.

The above pointers will help you look for the best deals in the right places. If you find the right prices, do not hesitate and book your flight tickets immediately, since pricing on flight tickets can change at any moment.

FAQs about How to find cheap flights

There is a lot you question that comes to people’s mind while booking a flight some of the common questions are answered below.

Q1. When should I book to get the cheapest flight tickets?

For domestic travel, you should ideally purchase your tickets two to three weeks prior to the departure date, and for international travel, you should purchase your tickets four to five months prior to departure.

Q2. How do I find the cheapest flights every time?

1. Use Frequent Flyer Miles.
2. Search Google Flights.
3. Look for Mistakes in Fares.
4. Search Budget Airline Sites.
5. Check Skiplagged.
6. Book at the Right Time.
7. Fly During the Off-Season.
8. Be Comfortable with Strange Itineraries.

Q3. Do flight prices go down on Tuesday?

They analyze what their competitors are charging for routes on Tuesday mornings and change their prices accordingly. Tuesday afternoons are the most affordable time to purchase a plane ticket since, by the afternoon, they have decided on the most reasonable prices.

Q4. When to find the cheapest flights?

Particularly, the cost of airline tickets typically doesn’t decrease as travel dates get closer. Instead, the cheapest times to purchase a flight are four to three weeks before the departure date. After that time, rates are predicted to increase based on the CheapAir 2019 Annual Airfare Study.

Tell Us In The Comments Your Trick About How To Find Cheap flight tickets.

Hope the article was helpful to you and was able to make your trip more easier and fun! Don’t forget to book your personalized holiday package with Fiery Trippers. Let us make your vacation a romantic and dreamy getaway.