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20 PRO TIPS AND RESOURCES FOR ALWAYS FINDING THE CHEAPEST FLIGHTS

Pro Tips: Airfares account for a significant portion of most travel expenditures, particularly when traveling abroad. However, this is not required. The airline business employs dynamic and sometimes illogical pricing for their trips, allowing consumers to look for bargains and even trick the system.

I’ve been traveling full-time and buying flights on a regular basis since 2011, so I constantly try to obtain the best deal by travel hacks. This is one of the ways that has enabled me to explore the world on a tight budget. Of course, my objective with this website is to help you travel more and save money.

This essay will show you 20 of the top tactics that travel hackers use on a regular basis, ranging from uncovering mistaken prices to dumping gasoline and booking discounts that most people are unaware of. You may not be able to master all of these strategies overnight, so bookmark this page and return later to refresh your skills before booking your next trip.

1. Join Your Favorite Airline’s and Hotel’s Rewards Program.

Okay, this is really simple, yet it is one of the most significant components of travel hacking. Sign up for reward programs to earn points or miles that you can exchange for free travel or upgrades. Consider miles and points to be currencies with a definite value. Some kilometers are worthwhile to pursue, while others are not.

If you’re unsure which programs are ideal for you, start by opening a frequent flyer account with American Airlines (One World), United Airlines (Star Alliance), or Delta Airlines (SkyTeam). These three airlines are the best at covering all three main airline alliances, offering you more opportunities to earn and redeem points. While these airlines are situated in the United States, signing up with them is still convenient for passengers from all over the world.

Also, while I recommend these airlines, consider which one is the most convenient for you. For example, if you reside in Alaska, signing up for Alaska Airlines’ frequent flyer club (One World) is generally a good idea because you’ll probably fly them more than any other One World carrier. Sign up for the Starwood Preferred Guest loyalty program for hotels. This is a hotel loyalty program that rewards you with points for your hotel stays and allows you to exchange airline miles for them.

2. Begin by searching for Error Fares.

I adore mistake tickets, and they are frequently the ones that will save you hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars on a flight. An error fare is simply an airfare that the airline has priced incorrectly due to a computer malfunction, someone pressing the incorrect button, or forgetting to include any taxes or other levies. Error prices are often the cheapest options for any particular journey. Consider traveling from New York to Sydney, Australia, for $300 roundtrip when the average cost is $1,000 or more.

There are five key things to know regarding mistake fares.

Where do you locate these mistaken fares? Secret Flying is one of the most popular mistake-fares websites. Their Facebook page is also a wonderful resource for keeping up with the latest promotions. An example of an incorrect meal. This one was released today, and it has already expired.

Other incredibly great websites worth following for incorrect fares and bargains are:

Mighty Fares is worth mentioning because it provides daily deals, although the site is less user-friendly and more enthusiast-focused. You have to be familiar with the airport codes (SJU to YXX, for example) in order to comprehend where this offer will take you. The discounts are only listed with these numbers.

Then there are email subscription flights, which bring you the greatest discounts from your departure airport right to your inbox. Here are the finest ones:

3. “Shop Around” on Different OTAs for Airfares

All online travel agencies (OTAs), or search engines, are unique, and there is no “one site to rule them all” for finding the lowest airline. Some may provide special discounts that make a certain route cheaper if booked with them, while others may offer routes with certain airlines that are not available on other booking platforms. That is why you should always search around and check rates before buying flights. This is the polar opposite of mistaken fares, which must be booked promptly.

The following are my top suggestions, along with my reasons for like them. (in no particular sequence.)

Search the Google Flights map. The other search engines mentioned above offer comparable maps.

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4. Look for flights that depart on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays.

Let me begin by dispelling the misconception. No, looking for flights on Tuesdays or after midnight will not result in lower prices. However, flying on a Tuesday or Wednesday is usually less expensive if you’re traveling to a busy business destination. Especially if traveling within the United States. Furthermore, flying on a Saturday may be less expensive if you’re flying on famous tourist routes, since many visitors don’t want to disrupt their weekend by flying in or out. Weekday flights to Europe are typically less expensive as well.

Skyscanner’s booking data research shows that January is the cheapest month to fly from the United States.

5. Have a lot of flexibility when making travel arrangements.

Flexibility is essential for receiving the lowest available airfare. You should be open to different travel dates and modes of transportation. Look for “inconvenient” times to fly, such as early in the morning, late at night, or red eyes (overnight trips). Also, utilize the search function on Kayak, Kiwi, and Expedia, among others, to see the cheapest flights three days before and after your chosen departure and return dates.

WayAway also provides a daily pricing chart that displays the daily price range of your airfare for the entire month. If you’re visiting numerous places, experiment with the order of the cities to find which one is cheapest. When it comes to flights, the most “logical” approach does not always mean the cheapest. As previously noted, Kiwi provides a really interesting tool to assist you with this. An example of Kiwi’s Nomad function. A fairly fantastic bargain for all of those flights.

Be flexible about modifying the month of your trip. Flying to Europe in June vs. July may make a significant difference in price and experience. This essay will inform you of the best sites to visit, depending on the month of the year.

6. Learn how far in advance you should book your flights.

The airline business can constantly surprise us with last-minute offers and odd inexpensive flights, but there are some price tendencies we can’t ignore. According to CheapAir, the optimum time to book flights to the United States, Mexico, the Caribbean, and Central America is 70 to 88 days before your trip. Canada, on the other hand, requires roughly 205 days in advance.

South America displays around 79 days in advance, whereas Asia shows 314 days in advance. Book around 79 days in advance for Europe and 94 days in advance for the Middle East. Africa and the South Pacific should be booked 213 and 309 days in advance, respectively. Again, this is simply a general guideline based on flight search data for 2021. For the most recent figures, use CheapAir’s tool, which displays the optimal time to book a flight depending on your itinerary.

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Google’s research is based on 12 years of data and may be summarized as follows:

For flights from the US to Mexico and the Caribbean, search between 37 and 87 days before travel, with the average lowest price at 59 days.

7. Be open to a stopover or a lengthy layover.

Long layovers are often necessary to secure lower tickets, but they are not always a terrible thing. If you have a stopover of six hours or longer during the day, you can use that time to visit the city. It’s like taking a mini-vacation within your journey. Many airlines also enable you to prolong your stopover for free, allowing you to spend a few days there before continuing on to your destination.

Make sure to prepare ahead of time and book your trip with the longer layover, ideally on the airline’s website, if you can get the same low tickets you saw on the OTA. Boarding flight from Beijing to Pyongyang, North Korea. My initial destination was Pyongyang, but I spent three days in Beijing as part of my stopover.

8. Get a Hidden City ticket.

Speaking of layovers, it can often be less expensive to fly to your destination as a stopover in your airfare than to go there directly. Each airline has a hub airport (or several). When you fly with such an airline to its hub airport, your price will most likely be higher because airlines often charge more when your final destination is their hub.

I’ll give you an example. I booked. After Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico, my mom and I knew we had to evacuate the island as quickly as possible. Of course, because of the conditions, few airlines flew there in the following weeks, and those that did charged a premium for everything. However, the hidden city method saved my parents and myself a significant amount of money.

We meant to go from San Juan to Atlanta, but instead booked a Delta trip to Miami with a stopover in Atlanta. We paid roughly $180 per person instead of $600+ if we only booked from San Juan to Atlanta. We simply hopped off there, deliberately missing our flight from Atlanta to Miami.

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However, there are five necessary requirements for performing this:

Skiplagged.com is a website dedicated to revealing these pricing anomalies in airfare. Have fun! This site, in my experience, works best for domestic fares in the United States and several European countries.

9. Don’t dismiss budget airlines and secondary airports.

These airlines might be quite cost-effective! Budget airlines such as AirAsia, Norwegian Air, Play Airlines, and EasyJet, among others, offer low-cost flights from the United States to Europe, Asia, and Africa. They provide the same function as other carriers—transporting you from point A to point B—but at a lesser cost and with fewer facilities than traditional airlines.

In my experience, flying from Bangkok to New York with Norwegian Air instead of any other big carrier saved me more than $300. In Asia, I have traveled with AirAsia for as little as $35 one way. Seriously. Not all cheap airlines appear on OTAs, so you may need to do some extra research to discover them and search straight on their website. This is more common with smaller airlines.

Fortunately, Wikipedia is a valuable resource. They offer a website that lists all budget airlines grouped by base nation. Budget airlines typically fly to secondary airports since they charge fewer taxes, landing fees, and privileges, resulting in lower tickets. These secondary airports are typically located far from the city center, so make sure to check how simple it is to get from the airport to the city center and how much it will cost.

In certain situations, the cost of local transit might make a cheap budget airline ticket more expensive and time-consuming than a big airline ticket.

10. Consider including some overland travel on your trip.

Due to competitive pricing, flying to a big airport a few hours away from your destination may occasionally be the cheapest alternative. You can then travel overland by bus, rail, or car to your destination. The website Rome2Rio is really useful for determining whether the total cost of flying plus overland transportation is less than the cost of a flight alone.

11. Use a “fake” location to get cheaper plane tickets.

Many airlines and OTAs have multiple versions of their websites for various countries. Prices for each edition may fluctuate depending on the geographic region, local currency, and local deals. Depending on conversion rates, a flight may be less expensive in the airline’s home currency and location. (For example, Asiana Airlines, a Korean airline, has a Korean site instead of a US site.) It is also feasible to book a flight on a website in a nation different from yours or the airline’s.

Even search engines such as Kayak and Skyscanner allow you to access any of their international websites. Each of them displays a different price based on the offers made by the local flight suppliers. Just have fun searching on many overseas websites. The international site choices are normally found in the website’s header or footer.

If you find a cheaper flight on an international version of the airline’s or OTA’s website and want to pay in a foreign currency, be sure the exchange rate is favorable to you and that your credit card does not charge foreign transaction fees. This Time article demonstrates a nice example of this “fake” location method.

Similarly, dynamic pricing occurs between cities and down to your zip code. It is based on the area’s typical living costs and income statistics. Someone in New York City, for example, may pay more for the same flight than someone in Knoxville, Tennessee. In these instances, a virtual private network (VPN) comes in handy since it allows you to connect to a distant network and change your IP address to one in any city of your choice. This tricks the site into believing you’re there rather than your true location.

ExpressVPN and SurfShark are the VPNs that I use and recommend. They’re safe, quick, and confidential. They also offer global networks that allow you to shift your location across cities and countries. Using a VPN to just move locations can save you a few dollars, so don’t expect a significant price difference, if any. Changing countries may have a greater impact, depending on the airline’s dynamic pricing.

12. If you are traveling round-trip, think about looking for two one-way tickets for your flights.

Sometimes looking for the same route as two one-way trips instead of a round-trip will save money. While search engines often combine airlines to provide the best pricing, this is not always the case for roundtrips, particularly when cheap airlines not displayed in OTAs are an option.

13. Book a round-trip ticket, but fly only one way.

It may appear contradictory to what I just mentioned, yet the airline business makes little sense when it comes to price. So, even if you only want to fly one way, check the cost for a round-trip since it may be cheaper. You don’t have to fly back. Some round-trip flights can be less expensive than one-way flights since airlines provide special rates when specific conditions are met, one of which is the number of days in your stay. These offers are usually activated for stays of roughly a week or two weeks.

Furthermore, airlines often charge less for roundtrips due to scheduling issues. They also want the return flights to be filled. Furthermore, leisure travelers prefer roundtrip flights, and the industry is well aware that leisure travelers choose lower airfares over convenient prices. I once traveled one-way from Brazil to Puerto Rico for $375 round-trip, when the one-way ticket would have cost $500 or more. This video discusses this in further depth, as do many of the other topics covered in this essay. You may find the round-trip vs. one-way cost around the 7:00-minute mark.

14. Book an Open-Jaw Flight

Open-jaw flights land at one airport and depart from another. (Fly from New York to Paris and then return from London to New York.) Purchasing open-jaw tickets is similar to purchasing a round-trip (even if they are technically not round-trips) since the airline still considers them outward and incoming flights under the booking, avoiding charging certain expenses such as fuel surcharges and taxes twice. Use the “multi-city” search feature on Kayak, Kiwi, Momondo, and other search engines to get an open-jaw ticket.

If you want to go a little more technical, you can use the Google-ITA Matrix to perform both this and the hidden city trick. This is not a booking engine, but rather a complete tool that displays prices straight from the airline’s databases. Travel industry experts highly recommend this matrix because it enables you to carry out intricate and precise searches that include (or exclude) specific airports, airlines, points of sale, stopover airports, segment runs, and so forth.

More information on this fantastic tool may be found in this Travel + Leisure article and this FlyerTalk forum discussion. Unfortunately, you cannot book flights with this tool; however, you may enter your search criteria into BookWithMatrix.com to find those precise tickets on another OTA. Alternatively, take note of the flight numbers and book them using your choice of search engine.

15. Obtain “Hacker Fares” by splitting your booking.

While most search engines already handle this by mixing multiple airlines for outward and incoming flights, as well as different airlines for layovers, you may take it a step further by dividing your ticket into domestic and international flights. Assume you’re traveling from Tennessee to Paris with a stopover in New York City. After you’ve determined the cost of the trip as a single booking, search it again, but this time separately for the domestic leg (Tennessee to NYC) and the international leg (NYC to Paris).

In many circumstances, this strategy proves to be a significant cost savings. Domestic rates vary little, especially if the route is busy, while international fares vary dramatically. International airfares that are combined with domestic travel are frequently more expensive, but you may book identical tickets individually for a fraction of the cost. As an example, I purchased a multi-city flight from Milan to New York, Puerto Rico, New York, Brazil, and eventually London. When I looked into the full vacation, the overall cost was more than $3200.

Obtain-Hacker-Fares-by-splitting-your-booking-travel

However, when I divided the domestic leg, which is the New York to Puerto Rico round-trip, the total cost came to roughly $1,500 ($1,250 for the international flights and $250 for the NYC to Puerto Rico round-trip). The initial cost is not even half of this. You may also combine big airlines with low-cost carriers to lower your costs. To discover all of the budget airline flight alternatives in Europe, visit low-cost-airline- guide.com. Alternatively, you may visit the previously stated Wikipedia article, which has a list of all budget airlines throughout the world.

One thing to keep in mind is that for each individual booking, you will be responsible for checking in separately, as well as checking in your back and picking them up at the end of each leg. Also, if one flight is delayed, the airline will not assist you with your connecting trip because it was not included in the ticket. Book your layovers with at least three hours between flights, especially if you’re flying internationally, because you’ll have to go through immigration to get to your next aircraft.

You can also use the more extended stopover strategy described in tip #7.

Kiwi.com, for example, has included its “Kiwi.com Guarantee,” which is frequently included automatically on reservations with several airlines and protects your trip against unexpected carrier changes. It applies to all of your connections, whether you self-transfer or travel by aircraft, train, or bus, and it protects you against carrier cancellations, delays, and schedule changes. When it comes to booking flights with different connecting carriers, Kiwi is my favorite site.

16. Look beyond the OTAs for local airlines.

As I indicated in tip #8, inexpensive airlines do not appear on all search engines, and the same is true for local airlines, particularly outside the United States and Europe. If you’re dissatisfied with the airline pricing you’ve discovered on search engines, visit Wikipedia! If you know the name or code of your destination airport (for example, LAX), go to Wikipedia and search for it.

Wikipedia provides a rather comprehensive database of most, if not all, airports across the world. It generally displays all of the airlines that fly there, even the obscure or unknown ones, as well as the destinations they serve. If you find an airline on the list that did not show up in a search engine, go straight to their website and verify their costs. Alternatively, you may Google the airport and navigate to their website, if one exists. Landing in Bhutan’s Paro district. Only three airlines fly into this airport. Two of them are Bhutanese airlines; the third is a charter flight from neighboring Nepal.

Also, most consumers fail to double-check pricing with the airline. Sometimes the prices offered on aggregator sites may not match what the airline shows directly on their site, and in certain situations, visiting the airline’s site may save you money. Another advantage of booking via the airline’s website is that you will not have to deal with a third party (and their additional costs) if you need to amend or cancel your reservation.

17. Use your browser’s “Incognito” or “Private Browsing” mode.

When you search for flights on the Internet, websites utilize cookies to keep track of your visits, and they frequently boost rates (or hold them at the same price if they recently dropped) merely because they know you’ve already visited there and seen a specific price. Incognito mode masks your browsing history and cookies, so websites don’t recognize you. Incognito browsing mode is often located on your browser’s “File” tab. This technique is generally helpful to save a few bucks, so don’t expect a significant price difference, if any.

18. Choose the best travel credit card for you.

Travel credit cards not only help you save money overseas by not charging foreign transaction fees, but they also tend to provide more points and miles per dollar on travel-related purchases and other categories. Furthermore, credit cards typically provide sign-up bonuses ranging from 30,000 to 50,000+ miles or points after meeting their spending requirements within a specific time frame. That many miles is enough to pay for both domestic and international roundtrip flights. To get the most points possible, I pay for everything using my credit card and make sure to pay it off before the end of the payment period.

Every person will have a unique credit card based on their bank, credit history, and even favorite airlines. There are countless card possibilities, but the Chase Sapphire Preferred and Chase Sapphire Reserve appear to be in most travel expert wallets. I have both, and they are my preferred cards for making transactions. The Reserve has a hefty yearly cost of $450, but you receive a $300 travel expenditure reimbursement each year, as well as free worldwide entrance and a gratis subscription to the Priority Pass Club.

At the end of the day, you are receiving your money back in value. The Preferred, on the other hand, costs $95 a year but does not include the aforementioned bonuses. Nonetheless, its sign-up incentive is wonderful.

19. Shop using airline shopping portals to double your miles.

When shopping online, use your preferred airline’s mileage mall gateway to find the things you’re looking for. Most major airlines feature an “online mall,” which they connect to on their website or frequent flyer page. These “online malls” frequently provide multiple points per dollar or particular bonus miles (e.g., 5,000 more miles) for specific purchases. You may easily earn 3, 5, and even 15+ miles or points per dollar by shopping through their portals, rather than just one by purchasing straight from the business.

You may not always find the things you’re searching for on these shopping portals, but it never hurts to explore them to see if there’s a way to earn double miles. Evreward.com is a great place to look at current rewards and see how much you’ll earn per dollar with a specific card at a given retailer.

20. Eliminate the fuel surcharge.

I will conclude this article with the most difficult of all the methods and hints discussed here. This one is mainly for experienced hackers or really patient individuals, but the benefits are enormous if you strike the jackpot with the recent spike in oil prices, several airlines have begun to include fuel surcharges in their foreign pricing. This fuel fee can be much more than the real base ticket, which is why many travel hackers strive to avoid it.

Fuel dumping is the practice of eliminating these large surcharges from purchased tickets that follow the YQ or YR price standards. By eliminating the gasoline surcharges, you may immediately reduce the overall cost by half, three-quarters, or more, reducing a $1,000 ticket to about $300. There are several methods for dumping the gasoline surcharge, but the most basic and prevalent is a 3x, or “third strike.”

Although the notion is simple, it is difficult to find. (Otherwise, everybody would do it!) This is how a third strike operates. Assume I’m traveling roundtrip from New York to London (using an OTA’s “multi-city” search, not an airline’s website); I’d add a third short journey at the end, most likely to and from unrelated places.

For example, I may include a flight from Bangkok to Chiang Mai a week after my targeted round-trip. This third flight is intended to eliminate the fuel surcharges on my round-trip journey. The goal is to discover those “magic” third legs that not only eliminate the fuel surcharge (depending on airline pricing regulations and country of origin/destination restrictions on fuel surcharges), but also cost less than the roundtrip.

For this to operate, you must first learn about and study the fare rules to determine what applies and what is permitted. This is one of the most critical phases in making the 3x function. Airlines dislike customers who dump gasoline, which is why they monitor forums to find and close these loopholes. That is why travel hackers keep all fuel-dumping tactics secret. They even have their own language for discussing their tactics “in secret.”

To be honest, I don’t understand all of the jargon, but if you want to dive down the rabbit hole to interpret it and learn more about the fare laws, check out this FlyerTalk discussion. Warning: This is a long read. To discover more about how to get rid of gasoline surcharges, see this, this, and this page. Alternatively, Secret Flying offers a new paid service that might help you find flights that are “fuel dumpable.” Some of these suggestions may involve some effort and an hour of your time, but they are worth saving hundreds of dollars! Yes, I believe so.

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