How To Save Money On Airline Tickets

If your first steps are booking hotels and planning activities, but you leave the actual flights until later, you’ll be stuck with whatever you get. Typically, the closer you get to your departure date, the more prices rise, so it’s not advisable to wait too long.

Skyscanner

When I plan travel, my very first step is finding a flight deal. My favorite tool for this is Skyscanner, which literally lets you search “Everywhere” when you don’t have a destination in mind yet.

Once I see a good flight, I’ll do some quick research about the location, scope out accommodation options just to make sure there are some available on those dates, and then just go ahead and book before prices rise.

The other logistics, like actually booking the accommodation, come second — you just want to be sure you have the flight itself locked down first, since that will affect the rest of your plans.

Want to see just how powerful booking early can be? Here’s a sample search from JFK in New York to Oslo, Norway.

This is the price to book last-minute.

And this is the price to book about a year in advance:

Booking early is also the way to get the best places to stay. I know it can be mentally harder to book so far ahead when it still feels abstract — but for practicality’s sake, advance planning is usually the way to go.

If you’re not on board for the impatience of waiting 12 months to go on your trip, don’t worry: it doesn’t have to be that far ahead. Booking 70-90 days before departure seems to be a good sweet spot, according to this study.

2. Check Other Airports

You don’t have to limit yourself to the airport closest to your home. In some cases, it can pay off to travel the extra distance to get to a larger hub airport, even if you have to spend a bit more to get yourself there.

A lot of flight tools will make airport comparisons easy by allowing you to check a box that says something like “Add nearby airports.” Here’s how it looks on the flight search site Kayak:

This will give you results for a wider radius than just your home airport. From there, you can weigh the cost savings vs. extra time and hassle for you.

For instance, if you could save $200 by driving an extra hour, that’s like being paid $200 an hour. (And I don’t know about you, but my regular hourly rate isn’t quite there yet!)

But if you’d only save $40, the transportation and time costs might not be worth it.

3. Search With Flexible Timing and Destinations

Not sure where you want to go? That’s actually a benefit!

During the planning process, the more flexible you can be about when and where you want to travel, the better deals you’ll be able to find. Unless you’re forced to lock down your plans to a specific location on a specific date, leave it open!

But if you don’t know where you’re going, how can you possibly search for flights? There are a couple ways!

My favorite tool for this is Skyscanner. Simply plug in the city you want to leave from. In the “To” field, put “Everywhere.” In the depart- and return-date fields, you can choose specific months or even filter based on what is the cheapest time to go.

From there, Skyscanner looks through available flight data and breaks down results by country and cheapest available price.

If you’re interested in a specific country, you can click the arrow to view specific cities, then click through to see available dates and carriers.

This way, you spot a flight that’s cheap and the destination interests you, you can just go for it!

You might even surprise yourself and go somewhere you hadn’t even been considering, especially if you see a flash deal for it. Which brings me to a related point…