How To Get the Cheapest Flights - A Comprehensive 2021 Guide
Jin - February 15, 2021
Plane tickets have accounted for roughly 37% of my total travel expenses accounting for domestic and international travel. To bring this percentage down, I’ve researched how to find the cheapest flights. If you’re looking for the same, read on to determine how you can get the cheapest flights for your next vacation.
General Tips
- If you don’t use any of these other tips, do this: BOOK EARLY. Prices, in any market, are subject to the simple economic law of supply and demand. In this case, it’s plane tickets. As the date of your trip gets closer and closer, more and more people are trying to book whether it’s because they’ve procrastinated or their plans have been solidified. This increases the demand for those tickets and since there’s only a certain number of seats available, the prices will naturally go up. Coupled with this is the fact that business travelers tend to book 1-2 weeks out and their company is paying their tickets so airlines can charge whatever they want. I tend to book tickets 6+ months ahead. The earlier, the better.
- Be flexible. Departing on Friday is the most expensive while Tuesday and Thursdays tend to be the cheapest days of the week to depart. The difference of one day can mean hundreds of dollars in savings. Also, try to avoid peak season when everyone tends to travel like the summer.
- Have the top 5 destinations you want to visit and be ready to book months ahead. I say have a few destinations ready because the deals that you end up finding must be booked right away. Having a few choices maximizes your chance of getting a flight to a location that you actually want.
- Search ticket prices as one person. When you look for flights for a group of people, airlines will always show the most expensive set of seats. Buy them separately and choose the seats in the checkout section so that your group sits together. Or sit apart if you guys don’t mind.
- Understand the “Southwest Effect”. This is when an airline enters a route that they haven’t served before. Again, based on the law of supply and demand, this increases the supply of flights for that route and therefore, assuming the same demand from flyers, the average price of airfare for that route will decrease.
- Alternate airports. Understand where the alternative airports are for the destination that you are choosing and check ticket prices for those as well. For example, if you are flying to Miami, check flights to Fort Lauderdale (FLL), Miami (MIA), and West Palm Beach (PBI). At the extreme, you may be able to fly into one airport for $100 cheaper and drive to your destination that could be an hour or so away.
- Utilize the best apps. Apps and services like Google Flights, ITA Flight Matrix, Scott’s Cheap Flights, Skipplagged, and Secret Flying app will help you find the cheapest flights and/or notify you when they find deals or incorrectly priced flights. Some examples include US West Coast to Asia (cheapest: $300, Realistic: Mid $500s RT) and Florida to Northeast US (cheapest: $60, Realistic Mid $100s RT). Read more below for a detailed look into each of these apps and how they can help you spend less money.
- Finally, choose budget airlines. This is kinda a no brainer but really should be mentioned. Flying the budget airlines is a good alternative to flying “the majors” whenever possible. You get fewer perks, but you can save a bundle in price.
I’m going to expand on item 7 and talk a bit about the apps and websites that can help you save money on flights.
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Google Flights and ITA Flight Matrix (AKA ITA Software Matrix)
Chances are, you’ve heard of Google Flights. It’s basically a flight aggregator made by Google and has a great user interface. Here are some awesome things you can do with Google Flights that you may not know:
- Google Flights tells you 1 of 3 things when you’re looking at tickets: whether the ticket is “Unlikely to drop before you book”, “Prices are less than usual”, and “Prices are likely to increase”. They have leveraged their data crunching technologies and machine learning to give you these tips.
- You can set airfare alerts. If you do, Google will email you when you select the “Track prices” button when looking for tickets.
Now, ITA Flight Matrix is very similar to Google Flights because it basically powers it. Google bought the ITA Flight Matrix software to leverage their technology.
One great thing that ITA Flight Matrix does that Google Flights doesn’t do is show you the lowest cost tickets for multiple destinations. This is how you can do it:
1. Select the multi city tab option.
2. Input the various cities you want to visit and the departure dates and click “Search”.
3. View the results and filter them to your liking. You can play around with the tool since it’s pretty easy to use.
4. Once you get to the summary page, you can’t actually book from there. You will need to manually go to the airline’s website to book.
Skiplagged (SL)
Skiplagged has a great website and user interface. It’s easy to use, fast, and saves you money which is what we want.
One big thing about SL is what they call hidden-city flights. If you book these flights, you get off at a layover as opposed to the actual destination. I used SL to get to NY but the final destination for that flight was Richmond, VA.
Yes, these flights can be cheaper. A few tips though:
- Don’t check luggage because then you won’t have it since it flies to the destination.
- Don’t associate your frequent flier miles account with this flight since the airline may invalidate them.
- Some airlines may require proof of a return ticket during check-in. You can buy a refundable return ticket directly from the airline and cancel it ASAP after boarding.
- If you book a hidden city flight, you will have to book 2 separate one-way flights if you want to do a roundtrip. This is because if you book a roundtrip flight and skip the last leg of your outbound flight, the airline will cancel your return flight.
You may want to use these deals sparingly though because it upsets the airline companies. However, you definitely can save a lot of money using them. Check them out now to find the cheapest flights for your next vacation!
Scott’s Cheap Flights (SCF) and the Secret Flying (SF) App
SCF is basically a free email list that you sign up for, and they then notify you of cheap deals. They have people, actual humans, that look for deals on flights all day, everyday. I’ve used SCF many times and I definitely recommend it.
What’s awesome about SCF is that they notify you about “mistake fares” like a nonstop, roundtrip flight from NYC to Milan costing $130.
SCF also has a premium version where you pay a yearly fee to get access to up to 5X more deals that are also only available to premium members. At the time of this writing, the yearly fee is $49 which is really worth it if you travel relatively often.
I lumped the Secret Flying app in with SCF because it provides a very similar free service in that it alerts you when there are deals on flights as well as “mistake fares”.
The difference is that SF has a mobile app you can download from the Apple Store or Google Play. SF has a website too but I recommend the app over the site as the site is a bit less appealing and user friendly.
One really cool thing about SF is what they call open-jaw flights. These are super cheap deals that start and end at different locations. For example, departing from NY to Tokyo and return from Tokyo to Boston.
Conclusion
Armed with this new knowledge, you are well on your way to finding the cheapest flights ever! Following the best practices when booking tickets and utilizing the awesome apps and services that I have mentioned will save you a lot of money, on the order of hundreds of dollars.
Here is some extra reading that you can do to understand a bit more of the services I talked about:
- https://scottscheapflights.com/guides/how-to-use-google-flights
- https://upgradedpoints.com/matrix-ita-advanced-guide-tips-for-finding-cheap-airfare/
- https://scottscheapflights.com/guides/how-to-use-skiplagged-to-find-cheap-flights/
Thanks for reading and I hope you found this helpful!
