Money Saving Tips For Booking Flights

MONEY SAVING TIPS FOR BOOKING FLIGHTS

If you Google money saving tips for booking flights, you'd probably get a lot of hits in regards to this topic. While there are a lot of tips and tricks out there, different methodologies on getting the best deal, you need to keep in mind that these things are changing daily with new sites, apps, trends and so forth. The point I want to make is that the tips I'm about to mention are things that you can do to get the best deal possible which has proven to work for me over the past years. Next to accommodation, transportation/flights is one of your top expenses as a traveller. If you want to save money on flights, continue reading and please do share this post on your socials if you find it useful in the end to help other people like you who are looking for finding the best flights deals out there.

1) BOOK IN ADVANCE

Generally speaking booking flights in advance is much better than last minute most of the time. I say most of the time because there are last minute or black out deals which I will get into a bit later. If you already know where you'd like to go, it's better to book it ahead at least 21 days before your departure but preferably 3-4 months out. Prior to your trip, start watching for price trends and fluctuations. Jot it down a notepad if necessary if it will help you track it better. If you have no choice and have to fly last minute, check out hotwire for blackout deals. You don't see the exact times (but you see the duration) and locations of the layovers though it does show the price as well as certain terms of the flight. But of course whenever possible, book at least 21 days ahead.

2) BOOK MIDWEEK

Prices fluctuate throughout the week. Think about this for a second, when are people usually off work? When do people have the free time to sit down to look up flights online? When do people have time away from obligations, dropping the kids off at soccer practice, dinner plans? etc.

Usually the weekends. Airline companies know this and it's why prices fluctuate depending on when you book your flight. Here's what happens, airlines will put out their prices at the beginning of the week. Other airline companies will then drop their prices to stay competitive the following days. So ideally, a Tuesday or a Wednesday are the best days to book your flights. When the weekend comes around, the airline companies know that this is when a lot of people are off and when many have the free time to book their flights, the incentive for airlines pricing competitively lessens since people will book regardless around this time so prices go up!

3) FLY MIDWEEK

As I mentioned above, people have the free time on weekends so it's when they look to book their flights. Just like tip #2, the same concept applies to this tip. People also plan their trip around work. Many will depart over the weekend or on a Friday after they are done work. Yes you guessed it, airline companies know this so prices are typically more expensive during the weekend. Sometimes it's also cheap to fly out on Sunday's but midweek is ideally when you'd want to fly out.

4) RESEARCH SEVERAL SITES

Now that you know what and when to look for flights, you need to know where to look for it. You want to look up your flights in different search engines just to compare and get an idea of how much your flights are. 2-3 sites are more than enough when you're doing this. Some of the sites I use are Skyscanner, Kayak, Cheapflights, Google Flights, and Hopper.

5) AVOID POPULAR DATES

Whenever possible, avoid booking popular dates such as events and standard holidays. It is more than likely that many will be travelling around this time and the airlines know this so that means the prices will be higher than normal. Also, if you're flying into a particular country, check to see if they have any holidays that's taking place as it may be the reason that prices are high. For example, when the 2010 Winter Olympics took place in Vancouver, British Columbia, prices were higher than usual. Now think about this, if you weren't a fan of the olympics, the best time to have gone is right after the event because everyone is flying out, to keep the tourist coming in, the airlines and countries want to keep tourism going so prices will be lowered after to entice people to travel. The same thing happens after Christmas and the holidays are over, prices drop because everyone is going back to work, school and so forth.

6) FLEXIBILITY

This means be flexible with your departure dates as well as your return dates. Try different combinations from 7, 8 or 10 days if you're originally planning on travelling for just over a week. I'm not asking you to completely change your travel plans, but having some sort of flexibility with 1-2 day gap on your departure or return dates will give you an idea of which combination is more feasible to you. Also, look at different airports if a country you're flying into has multiple airports. Not only does it have to make sense financially, it also has to work with your travel plans. You just don't want to land at an airport if it requires you to take an expensive transportation to wherever you're going once you land.

7) CHEAP FLIGHTS ARE ALWAYS NOT THE BEST OPTION

Beware of cheap flights. There are times when these flights have long layovers or even overnight layovers. This may not be the best deal in the long run so you need to calculate and see if it's worth it because you need to tack on to your expense an accommodation for the night (if you're layover is overnight), your meal as well as transportation costs if needed. Sometimes it's just not worth it so you always need to evaluate if this "budget" option makes sense. Perhaps it's better to spend a couple of hundred dollars up front for the flight to save you more money as well as time.

8) BUY DIRECT

For tip #4, I mentioned that you need to look up flights on a couple of search engines. I hope you noticed that I never mentioned anything about buying your tickets on these sites. I asked you to simply just do your research on them to use it to cross reference prices, to see trends and price fluctuations.

Once you've found a flight that works for you, go to the airline's website and look for this exact flight and see if the price matches your original search as well as if it makes sense for you. Most of the time it will match more or less.There are several reasons to buy directly, one is for loyalty programs, you might as well collect points if you fly a lot with an airline carrier and get rewards for it. Another reason is if you need to change your flights, it's much harder to deal with the particular matter when there's multiple carriers involved. Aside from this, you may have to change these flights individually and pay them separately which will end up costing you more. It's just such a hassle to deal with multiple airlines when something unexpected happens. Here's a quick story, one time I was flying back home from Poland to Canada. My flight from Warsaw, Poland with LOT Polish Airlines which had a layover in London Gatwick got delayed by several hours. My connection flight with WestJet from London, Gatwick to Canada had already taken off before I even got to the airport because of the delay. I now had to deal with the two airlines. Dealing with WestJet was easy as I went to their customer service at the airport and they just gave me an extra ticket for the next day since that was the last flight that took off for the day. I then had to deal with LOT Polish Airlines which I had a bad experience with because it took them weeks to respond to my inquiry which in the end was never resolved. There were no compensation for the expenses I incurred during the missed connection. It was just time consuming dealing with two different airlines as opposed to solving the whole situation all at once.

9) HAVE THE PATIENCE BUT DON'T BE TOO PATIENT

What I mean by this is day by day and week by week, using these methods can be tedious. You need to spend some time on doing research so be patient though overtime, you will get better and be much faster when researching flights. On the contrary, if you feel that the flight is the best deal you'll get, don't hesitate to pull the trigger and book it. Do not second guess yourself because chances are, your gut is most likely right! Don't wait till the next day or the next week for prices to get better, if it feels right, just book that ticket! Do not and never overthink it.