There are a lot of articles and blog posts on how to get cheap flights. Most of them list all popular meta flight search engines and tell you some tricks like “look for airports nearby” and similar. In this post I will tell you secrets to get the cheapest flight possible which are often overlooked.
But lets begin with the basics:
The best flight search engines:
After having an overview of available flights always check the flight you are interested in on the airline’s website. Sometimes you get more details and options on the flight; can avoid the commission or even get a special deal.
General tips:
- try differnt days +- 2 days can make a significant difference in price
- try nearby airports
- try individual one-way flights instead of a round trip
Why you should not ignore traditional travel agencies:
As it is very convenient to book via the internet, very few people think of going to a travel agent and ask for an offer. You should do that! As they are all aware of the competition through internet booking, their fees are usually not much higher or even the same as booking through an internet booking site. They have however far better options to do a custom flight inquiry. A lot of advanced search option are simply not available in consumer-optimized internet booking systems. You travel agent however has these options. He can find special deals, especially for more complicated multi-stop flights.
As you probably do not want to waste your time talking to travel agents – I suggest the following method, which works fabulous for me:
Every traditional travel agents nowadays also has a website or at least an e-mail address. Build your personal email list of travel agents (I have about 30 in my list). Then you compose a mail which you will send to all of these addresses. It should contain what kind of flight you are looking for, what alternations are possible (nearby airports, flexible date, …) and how they should contact you. I figured out some agents prefer to send a fax rather than an e-mail. Some agents simply do not respond to your request if it looks not interesting for them. But as you mail your request to a lot of agents, you will often get very good offers. In many cases I get a flight by this method cheaper than any flight offered by internet flight search engines.
Local Budget Airlines
Budget airlines can make a huge difference in costs for a flight. They started with local flights but there are a lot of international budget airlines as well. As these airlines use all possible techniques to keep costs low, they usually do not partner with big flight databases and only sell directly through there website. That means you simply won’t find their offers in flight search engines!
Here is a list of popular budget airlines:
Africa Budget Airlines:
Australia, New Zealand, Pacific Budget Airlines:
Europe Budget Airlines:
India, Sri Lanka Budget Airlines:
Middle East Budget Airlines:
North America Budget Airlines:
South America Budget Airlines:
South East Asia Budget Airlines:
Intercontinental Budget Airlines:
In this article I only selected the most important budget airlines. Especially for Europe and North America there are a lot more. Do a custom search on your target destination for them.