19 Ways to Get Cheap Plane Tickets
When planning a trip, buying cheap plane tickets is one of our goals.
Why?
because airfares are expensive, especially if we’re going to Hawaii, Indonesia, or South Africa. So finding that bargain you’re looking for can become a challenge.
That’s why, in this post, I want to tell you 19 tips for buying cheap plane tickets so that your next trip doesn’t cost you a lot of money.
You may be wondering, “Why are flights so expensive?”
There are many reasons why plane tickets cost so much. Airlines must make profits and save costs without lowering their famous rates, therefore ticket prices cannot be dropped too far without jeopardizing safety.
Even so, there are many ways to get a cheaper flight and save on your next trip, depending on how flexible you are, the destination, when you buy the ticket, or what combinations and stops you prefer.
In addition, airlines make constant offers. Of course, you have to be attentive to get the best price! because the places on offer usually end soon.
How to Get Cheap Airline Tickets
After many years of traveling, I have discovered some tricks to buy cheaper plane tickets and save money on my trips. And I want to help you so that you can fly cheaply too.
Shall we start?
Select travel dates wisely.
Flight prices vary greatly depending on when you travel.It is clear that a flight will cost you much more if you fly at Christmas or in August than if you travel in June.
We all want to travel on the same dates, so the airlines raise prices because they know they are going to sell the tickets. and they take advantage of it.
Therefore, the only solution to ensure that it does not happen to you and that you get cheap plane tickets is to book flights for the less popular dates.
Yes, I know that you only have vacations in August and that at Easter you have a few days that you can’t change.
But what if I told you that by traveling only one day before or coming back a day later, you could save yourself hundreds of euros? Try to convince your boss to leave a day earlier or take one less day of vacation in exchange for saving that money.
For example, if you can use some vacation days on a Monday, you can travel from Friday to Monday and save a lot of money because everyone comes back from their getaways on Sunday afternoon. Or fly on Friday very early in the morning and come back on Sunday morning.
In this photo, you can see the difference between traveling one day and another.If you want to spend Reyes in Paris and return home on the 7th, it’s the most expensive day to fly. But if you book it the day after, it costs you half as much.
If you buy the plane ticket to fly in the middle of the week instead of the weekend, it will be cheaper. If you book the flight to travel after the holidays or Easter, for example, it will also cost you less.
Travel to any location
Don’t be picky about destiny. Do you know that traveling for 4 days to Paris in August will be more expensive than going to the Caribbean for a whole week with everything included?
Before choosing where to go on vacation, use a flight search engine such as Skyscanner (it is the one I always use to book my tickets), where you have the option to search for any destination in the world and thus know where it will cost you less to travel.
There are many search engines, and I recommend that you choose one or two and compare prices, because some do not have all existing airlines, and depending on the destination, you can find better prices in one search engine than in another.
I’ll give you an example so you can see how it works:
Go to the Skyscanner page from here. In “From,” put your city, and in “A” for the “Search Anywhere” option.
Then, for the dates on which you want to travel (or, if you have flexibility in dates, for the “more economical” option in departure and return), Click on “Search.”
You will get the lowest prices for the next 15 days.
In other words, if you come back in a few days to look for the same thing, it will have changed. So if you find a cheap flight, I advise you not to think about it too much and just buy it.
Now you just have to click on each destination to choose where you want to travel at the best price. It’s that easy!
It is critical to know when to book flights.
One of the most frequently asked questions that travelers ask me is when flights are cheaper.
I have to be honest and tell you that there is no magic formula that says: This is the best day of all to get cheaper plane tickets. But there are approaches that can guide us when it comes to knowing when to buy flights at a better price.
What we do know is that prices vary, and there is a point where they either begin to rise or fall, depending on demand. Don’t wait until the last minute to book a ticket or buy it too early.
I had to buy a Madrid-Bilbao ticket on December 31 to fly that same day, and even though the flight was empty (we were four people inside the plane plus the hostesses), I had to pay three times as much.
The best time to buy cheap plane tickets is about 6–8 weeks before the trip, or about 3 months before if the trip is in high season.
The latest studies of flight search engines say that the cheapest price you will find is 57 days before traveling. It’s worth a try, isn’t it? Check out this Viaconto infographic to help you find the cheapest flights.
If you are going to look for a flight, don’t do it on a Sunday, when everyone is on the couch at home looking at where to go on vacation. Do it on a Tuesday at 10 in the morning, when there are fewer people looking for flights, and you will get better prices.
Use the price alerts.
One of the best tools that flight seekers have to find cheap airline tickets are alerts.
How are they used?
It’s very easy; you just have to create an alert (I’ll explain how) and every time the flight you are interested in drops in price, they will send you an email. When plane tickets are cheapest This way, you will be aware of the price evolution and know when to buy cheap plane tickets.
To create an alert, you just have to go to Skyscanner and find the flight you want. For example, Madrid yParis, from August 21 to 27.
Once you have the search result, you just have to click on “Receive price alerts” and write your email. Every time the flight price changes, you will receive an email. It’s that easy!
Subscribe to flight offer newsletters.
One of the best-known travel websites in the world is Expedia. In your home, look for the “travel offers” or “Mega offers” tab. If you check it every week, you can find real bargains.
You can sign up for the Secret Flying newsletter. I am registered, and I receive an email every day with 5–6 bargains on flights from Europe to different destinations around the world. Recently, there was a flight from Madrid to Australia for 300 euros!
You can also sign up for my mailing list, and I will send you flight offers that I see that may interest you; or you can even send me an email with the flights you are looking for,When plane tickets are cheapest and I will find you the best prices (if you are not subscribed, do it right now here).
Pay attention to the mistakes of the airlines.
It is clear that we are humans, and we all make mistakes. the airlines as well.
Sometimes, technology plays a trick on them, and in the system, a flight that normally costs 500 euros appears as 50 euros because a zero was removed by mistake. Or simply, the system shows only the price of the flight without the fees.
These errors occur, and if you find them, you can buy a super cheap plane ticket. Of course, I don’t want you to be surprised. Sometimes you get it, but sometimes, when the airline realizes it and if there are many people who have bought that flight at the wrong price, When plane tickets are cheapest they cancel the tickets and give you back your money.
So if you find one of these errors, buy the flight but wait a few days to see if the airline cancels it or not. If you don’t hear from him, you already have a bargain!
They send me this type of error when I subscribe to the Secret Flying newsletter, for example.
Book last-minute flights
In general, if you book between three weeks and two days before the flight, it is usually more expensive, but sometimes, in low-demand destinations or unusual flight connections, you can find a last-minute bargain.
So, if you are one of those who knows about the holidays in advance, or if you didn’t plan to go anywhere and changed your mind a month before, don’t despair.Use the “Anywhere” option to travel, and you can buy cheap last-minute airline tickets.
For example, if I want to fly next week, I can find a flight to Birmingham for only 49 euros or to Miami for 363 euros. It’s not bad, is it?
Search by country, not by city.
Sometimes we get obsessed with wanting to go to London in August, when it may be much cheaper to fly to Edinburgh on those dates and enjoy the famous Edinburgh Festivals in the Scottish capital.
When searching for flights, think about which country you want to visit instead of focusing on a specific city.
It is amazing to discover that in many cases, it is cheaper to fly to another city that you are not familiar with.Or if it’s close to another city you want to visit, it may be cheaper to go there by train or rent a car.
For example, right now, if I do a search to travel to France, it seems to me that it is cheaper to buy a plane ticket to Toulouse, Nantes, or Bordeaux than to Paris. Why not take a route through those cities and save money?
The next time a bargain goes to Paris, When plane tickets are cheapest you can take advantage of it, and you will have already met other cities in France that are beautiful.
Use the right credit cards.
I am clear about this section. If you have two credit cards, one of which gives you points for travel and the other doesn’t, which one will you use on your next purchase?
Definitely the one that gives you the points.
If you don’t have cards of this type, it’s taking a while to get one!
I have been using them for years, and they don’t overcharge you, nor do you have to pay extra commissions for this service.
They are simply credit cards associated with one or more airlines, which, when you pay anything with them (from weekly shopping to a television), give you points that you can then spend on plane tickets.
Currently, the ones I use the most are the Iberia Sendo cards, which are two credit cards, a Visa and an American Express, that give you points to fly. In addition, when you get the cards, if you spend 400 euros in the first 3 months, you get 9,000 points, which is like a national round-trip flight.
Use the miles to travel cheaply.
As I told you in the previous section,When plane tickets are cheapest miles are the points you accumulate with the purchases you make with those cards.
With those miles, you can travel wherever you want for free or very cheaply. Personally, I have traveled for free to San Francisco, Miami, and many European cities with the accumulated miles, and our last flight to South Africa cost us only 200 euros.
Use the multi-destination option.
On multi-destination flights, also called open jaw flights, you leave from one city but return from another. It’s as if you bought two one-way flights, but when the search engines combined them, they found the cheapest option, as if they were round-trip flights.
They are super useful!
When we traveled to the west coast of Canada, we used this option because it was cheaper for us. We flew from Madrid to Vancouver, and we went back from Calgary.
Book one-way tickets
Like in the previous section, it is often cheaper to buy two one-way tickets. It all depends on the destination. So don’t close yourself off to this option and also look for one-way flights to find bargains.
Even so, I prefer to use the multi-destination option since I can see all the possibilities on the screen and it is easier to choose.
Fly to different airports.
The search for flights is both an art and a mystery. And you can spend hours and hours looking for the combination of dates, stopovers, When plane tickets are cheapest and airports that saves you hundreds of euros.
Sometimes, if you leave one airport but on the way back you fly from another, the ticket will be cheaper. So when you choose a city where you can spend your vacation, see how many airports it has and what options the search engines give you.
For example, on the flight from Madrid to Paris, When plane tickets are cheapest on the dates I have looked for, it is cheaper to fly to Orly airport on the way and from Charles de Gaulle airport to the Vuelta, since airlines depart from different airports.
Delete cookies and search history.
Another trick that is very useful when buying cheap airline tickets is to delete cookies and your browser history. Why?
Because search engines and airlines are very smart, they know when the last time you went online to look for a flight was and what flight you were looking for. So they won’t hesitate to raise prices.
Use the incognito window.
As in the last section, search engines will not raise your costs if you search for a plane ticket in an incognito window
Make a stopover.
On many international flights, it is worth making a stopover if you want to find the cheapest flights. Emirates and Qatar offer the finest service and costs if you stop at Dubai or Doha.
Not only do you save money, but if the stopover is long, you can also spend a few hours in the city and get to know a new destination.
Airlines must generate profits and decrease costs without reducing their famous rates, therefore ticket prices cannot be too low without compromising safety
Pay attention to the offers made by the airlines.
The airlines themselves will send you flight offers by email. Iberia and Qatar, for example, twice a year, take out millions of places at very affordable prices.
Of course, if you are interested in an offer, don’t think about it too much and book quickly because they will sell out in a few hours.
Remember, there are always offers for a destination; you just have to know how to find them.
Fly early in the morning.
Yes, it may seem obvious, because at 6 in the morning on a Friday, few people fly by plane; but very soon in the morning, that’s when you’ll find the best bargains.
Search for discount coupons.
There are also companies that are dedicated to finding the best bargains or negotiating with airlines to get discounts for travelers and thus buy cheaper airline tickets.
Stay watch for Cuponation discounts on flight search engines and airlines
