Most travelers understand that finding cheap flights online is very stressful. Some even handle the stress to travel agents to make the booking, but it all comes back to paying more to the travel agent. There are some simple tricks we all need to know when booking a flight. It may sound like a long process but it is worth spending less than spending more on booking a flight. With some years of experience in flight booking (before I even start travel blogging ), I have put together this simple guide, on how to find the cheapest flight to anywhere in the world.
The travel world is big, but we always find ways to make it simple to understand. Some important tools will help you find travel simple and you would also love to try them. But before I jump into my list, as a traveler, somehow you need some travel Apps or travel websites to help you make your trips simple. And if you have no idea about traveling apps or websites, try those: Top must use traveling Apps.
‘’Spoilers alert’’ The only best way to avoid missing cheap flight deals is having much patience and checking for price change all the time, each day and maybe night.
Let get back to the Ultimate guide on how to find the cheapest flight to anywhere. This piece will change your travel life and help you save more to travel to many places. Scroll down and learn how to book a cheap flight so you will arrive at your destination in style and reasonable price.
How To Find The Cheapest Flight
- Use Best Flight Search Engine
- Find Cheapest days to fly
- Book During Cheapest Travel seasons
- Get Error & Discount Fare News
- Subscribe To Airline Newsletters
- Aways Looking For Budget Airlines
- Select Cheapest Destination
- Using Online Travel Agents Can Make Your Flight Cheaper
- Booking Connecting Flight Yourself Can Be Cheap
- Check Alternative Airports
- Using Good VPN Service
- Buy Flight Ticket In Bulk
- Try Local Airline
- Check Currencies
- Don’t Wait Until The Last Minutes
1. Use Best Flight Search Engine
This is what I say to myself when booking for my clients, many are called but few are chosen. Not all airfare search engines are the best. Give yourself some time to learn and know which ones are the best and also learn how to use them for some great deals. Knowing and using a good airfare search engine is one of the best and easiest ways to find cheap flights. From what I know, some of these search engines have great technology to find the cheapest tickets across many airlines, and also give helpful tools like price prediction, price map based on the destination, fare alerts by emails when you subscribe, and many more using tools.
You don’t have to depend on only one search engine website. My advice is to check multiple flight search engines to compare prices before booking. You have no idea who has a great deal for your budget. I have few search engines I would like to recommend and these are what I mostly use for my clients. So this list is from experience. I’m making everything simple for you. So here are my best 4 flight search engines you should try.
My Four Best Flight Search Engines
Skyscanner And Momondo
These search engines work almost the same. I mostly compare prices from these two sites and I’m good to book. Aside showing you the best and cheap airfares, these engines also show you the price offered by many Online Travel Agents (OTA) who also sell tickets for that flight. And this is helpful because most Online Travel Agents on these websites sell cheaper tickets than the airlines, mostly for long-haul flights. These two sites list OTAs that offer the cheapest price for your budget. Skyscanner and Momondo also display more error fares.
Using these two sites, you will be able to get the cheapest airfares, best travel dates and find the cheap destination for your budget. If you can master how to use Skyscanner and Momondo, it is going to be easy on how to find the cheapest flight to anywhere.
Google Flight
We all know google is a trusted brand and google flight is one of the most powerful flight browsing tools in the world for finding cheap flights. Google flight technology helps to create complex searches with numerous filters and use the map or calendar took to find out the best destination or cheapest date for your trip. It also shows you accurate, live airfare prices. The site has it all, so it’s very easy to know everything.
Kiwi
Mostly kiwi works perfectly with connecting flights, arguable. For connection flight deals, I recommend Kiwi. But it is always best to compare prices with the other search engines. I have used Kiwi a few times and it works perfectly for my clients.
2. Find Cheapest Day To Fly
Traveling days can bring a change in airfare tickets. I mean some days are generally cheaper to fly than others. Many theories exist around booking specific days to save money. Well, it hasn’t really worked for me though, but I have a friend that works for him. But the point is, you know your budget and you can tell which day is best for you after monitoring.
Best Days To Book And Fly
Following the theories, it is always best to book 3-8 months in advance, that is for international flights. But for domestic flights, booking 1-3 months in advance can help you get cheap tickets.
People have their theories. According to my friend, Tuesdays and Wednesdays are best with fewer passengers and cheaper airfares. Saturday is also a great day to fly because people have already done all the flying before the weekend.
3. Book During Cheapest Travel seasons
Airline tickets don’t have fixed prices and you must know that by now. There are some seasons that airline tickets are very cheap and always suit your budget. To master how to find the cheapest flight to anywhere in the world you need to know which best season it is for cheap tickets. All the following steps and guidelines are going to be simple if you know which season is best.
Personally, some of the cheapest airline tickets I get for my clients are in January and February. I understand you can’t travel that season, but I’m asking you to book your ticket in advance during that season for the cheapest price. During these seasons, airlines seem to offer cheap flights because they know we have used all our money during the holidays but they have to boost demand.
4. Get Error & Discount Fare News
Even some sport betting websites make those mistakes. Error fares are simply the mistakes that occurred when systems are pricing up flights. These mistakes mostly happen but don’t normally stick for a long time, they see them fast and change them. Don’t think about it twice if you see a fare at a very very low price, just book. It is sometimes low as much as two-thirds of the normal price. Most errors can be canceled and refunded by the airline, but 75% of them are given out.
Most times it’s very important to subscribe to some of these websites to get daily news updates on a price drop. You may be busy and not able to check them regularly. Another best way to check for the best airfares is through airfare hunting websites. These hunting websites do all the digging work for you and give you some of the best deals possible. Google can give you a few flight deal newsletters website.
Error Fare Alert Websites
As I said, you may be busy and can’t check for errors, so let someone do the digging. Error fares don’t stay for long but you can still get one from some of my top error fare alert websites. Also, don’t forget to sign up or subscribe to their newsletters for any updates
5. Subscribe To Airline Newsletters
Sometimes cheap deals are available on some airline’s websites and most of these come in the form of promo codes and special offers for clients. On how to find the cheapest flight to anywhere, you need to subscribe or sign up for almost all sites you think it’s important to help you get cheap deals.
Signing up to an airline’s newsletter can give you access to some of their deals like sometimes the percentages they put on tickets. Many of these airlines require you to sign up for their customer loyalty programs for special newsletters. Here are some lists you would live to sign up for. Your email may look a little rough but you can use an email filter to automatically move them to a specific folder.
6. Aways Look For Budget Airlines
We know how some of these full-service airlines cost, but well unless you want some first-class service. But since you are reading this piece, that means you want to find the cheapest flight to anywhere you want to go. ( hahahahah not even funny). Budget airlines normally sell cheaper tickets than some full-service counterparts. With the budget airlines, it is obvious you won’t get much legroom and also no free food or drink onboard, but I’m not sure that is why you want to travel. Getting to your destination is the most important part when traveling.
Most budget airlines don’t allow some of these flight search engines to add their fares on their search results, so it’s very important to visit the budget airline’s official websites. It is important to also know most budget airline tickets are often non-refundable, can’t be changed, and also may fly to smaller airports outside the main city. You still have more time to travel by car, and I think that would be another fun for your trip. I have a list of budget airlines you can try.
Top Budget Airlines
United States
Canada
Europe
Asia
Africa
Latin America
7. Select Cheapest Destination
The more relaxing and flexible you are, the better your chance of getting cheap flights. There are many cheaper destinations you can discover on some of these flight search engines, but taking time and learning all these traveling tricks can help you fly always at a reasonable price.
Some search engine has made it so simple to discover cheaper destinations. With their technology, you just hop on their website and enter your departure city, then select a date range to fly. There is going to be a map showing you all the costs of destinations around the globe. Prices are listed according to your departure destination. Skyscanner and Kiwi.com is my best-recommended flight search engine.
8. Using Online Travel Agents Can Make Your Flight Cheaper
Sometimes try online Travel Agents (OTAs) for cheaper flight tickets. Buying tickets from OTAs is not going to be always, it’s a random thing. The truth is some airlines have their special cheap offers and Online Travel Agents sometimes get exclusive fares from some airlines, allowing them to sell add-ons like checked bags for far less than the airlines sell them. It is not something you can rely on, don’t depend on it much.
9. Booking Connecting Flight Yourself Can Be Cheap
Last year, I discovered it is cheaper when you book connecting flights separately rather than booking all at once. Was able to save more than $100 for booking my connecting flight separately. And I have got to know it is another best thing to do when you want to find the cheapest flight to anywhere
Booking long-flight separate can be a little tricky and if you don’t keep your eye on arrival and departure times for these flights to give yourself enough time to transfer. You might miss your flight. Some travelers book their connecting flight a day or two, so they can also explore more places.
10. Check Alternative Airports
This point doesn’t normally work in Africa. There are not many airports down here, so moving to another airport is more like another traveling adventure ( lol this is not spoilers alert ). But in most European and Asia countries, it is very common. If you happen to live near an airport, you can select your departure on the flight search engine to that airport and see if you can get a cheaper deal.
Traveling by bus to the nearest airport can save you some money if you know there is a cheaper ticket there.
11. Using Good VPN Service
Sorry for my words but I still call this ‘Hide My Ass’. One tricky smart thing about airlines is to change prices or charges according to your location or country. Mostly booking domestic flights outside the country is more expensive than booking them in the country.
Prices change based on where the booking and transaction are completed, I know this from experience. So you can beat their tech by using some of the best VPNs to hide your location, google can run up some lists when you search for Best VPN 2021.
Nord VPN is what I use and you can try it. Using Nord VPN is very easy and affordable. It’s available as an app on every smartphone and works perfectly for your network connection, try it and thank me later.
12. Buy Flight Ticket In Bulk
As a general rule, you will get better value on your flight tickets if you buy more at the same time, but only if they are with the same airline, or airlines in the same alliance. For example, flying a return ticket from Ghana to London with Emirates airline will be cheaper than 2 one-way tickets.
I don’t know if Round The World Tickets are available in Africa. This ticket is around-trip airline ticket where the destination and the origin are not the same in both directions. So you can fly to one city, then travel to another city before returning home (or country) Most people call it the RTW ticket. It is very affordable this way than booking all the fights separately. One best brands for RTW is OneWorld.
13. Try Local Airline
We don’t mostly see some of these local airlines in some top-flight search engines or even the small ones. But I think Google search engine has the answers to many questions, so you can google or ask around if there are any local airlines. Some of these local airlines are run mostly run by individuals and always fly cheaply. You can try and there is nothing to be scared of.
Hey, who knows, you can even get a free ride in the air. Just like searching for the best deals on flights, looking for local airlines can be a little stressful. It’s good to be patient and have luck.
14. Check Currencies
Personally don’t know how these work, but I have heard few friends talk about it. It is always better to consider if the rate is cheaper in any other currency. Automatically, flight search engines and airline websites convert to your destination currency. But that is not a bigger problem, you can still change it to any currency. And if that doesn’t work for you, use a VPN.
Always make sure the credit card you use is free for foreign transaction fees. Payment may not go through if your credit card can not make foreign transactions. Booking a flight in Africa can be more expensive than booking it outside Africa.
15. Don’t Wait Until The Last Minutes
There is this saying in Africa, last minutes are dangerous. These airlines operate more like forex trading. Price goes high during certain seasons, so you better not wait for the last minutes or close to your day of departure before you think of booking a cheap flight. To be honest you may not get cheaper airline tickets. This is typical in Africa and Europe. If you know where and when you going don’t wait on an unknown sale. Maybe unless you have saved more for booking a flight.
Now You Have What You Search For
These are guides that have helped me personally and some friends I know. There is this saying, no matter how rich you are or become, always ask for a price reduction when buying something.
Traveling is beautiful and knowing how to find the cheaper flight to anywhere can help you save money and travel to many places. Don’t let airline fares scare you from living in your dreams.
And I hope you found it useful.