These Clever Tips Will Show You How To Book The Cheapest Flight Possible

Sarah

Are you desperately in need of a holiday? So desperate that you’re considering quitting your job, telling your landlord to feck off and jetting off to SE Asia for as long as your measly savings will carry you?

The good news is you can easily wangle a weekend break away before summer time to tide you over, and it doesn’t have to cost a bomb. Flights are the first hurdle to tackle and thanks to Thrifty Nomads there’s a few solid tips on how to book the cheapest flight possible.

Follow these hacks and never pay through the roof for a flight again:

1. Keep flight searches secret

Think you’re going nuts that flight prices increase every time you search for them? Chances are it’s the website’s sneaky way of getting you to book faster before it rises even more. You should always search for flights in incognito browsing mode.

In Google Chrome or Safari, incognito is enabled by hitting Command (or “Control” if using PC), Shift, “N”. For Mozilla Firefox or Internet Explorer, hit Command (or “Control” if using a PC), Shift, “P”.

2. Use a good flight search engine

It’s hard work trawling through individual airline’s sites in order to get the best deal, which is why using a site like Skyscanner will find you the cheapest flights from thousands of airlines.

Other useful ones are AirFare Watchdog which tracks error fares, and Kiwi.com which combines different airlines for a cheaper route option.

3. Know which day is the cheapest to fly

Skyscanner is fantastic for this. Simply put ‘whole month’ in the search option and you can get a visual overview of which days are cheapest to fly in and out on.

4. Book long-haul flights yourself

Rather than booking a package flight that includes a short layover in a city, book two separate flights yourself and make the layover longer for a cheaper option.

AirWander is a search engine designed for doing exactly this. Put in your origin, final destination, and number of days you want to stopover and it will return a list of places you can visit on your stopover.

5. Don’t wait to book if you know when are where you want to go

Thrifty Nomads advises that very rarely ever do airline tickets get cheaper as your departure date approaches, especially if you need to fly on a certain date.

Budget airlines typically offer low rates as a baseline price, and as these tickets sell, the remaining ones increase in cost. Basically, if you need to go on a certain date book it ASAP.

Now, to figure out how many days we can take off work…