Whether you are going on your dream trip in Asia, North America, Africa, or you have a business trip, the journey starts when you set foot on the plane. One of the first things you need to take care of for domestic and international travel planning is booking flights. Therefore, for your next trip, it is good to keep an eye on flight deals to find the best ones. But what exactly are the best deals for flights? This blog post will guide you in finding the best deals when you book flights.
Prices and travel time are one of the main factors that travelers consider when looking for flights. Sometimes people just want to get away for the weekend and look at cheap flights without having any specific destination in mind. Shorter travel time without many stopovers also attracts travelers who want to book flights for their trips, when they don’t want to spend too much time of their vacation, just traveling to the destination.
Even though you think you found the best deal, the flights you booked can turn out to be delayed or canceled, and then your flight deal isn’t as good as you thought it was. Now it can mean you have extra expenses as a result of delays and cancellations or it means you arrive later than planned. This can mean that your preferences for prices and travel time have changed. However, in these cases, you might be eligible for compensation or a refund from the airline. At Air-Delay.com you can get help with understanding your air passenger rights and getting your money back from the airline. Generally speaking, the airlines make it hard for passengers to receive the money they are owed but we at Air-Delay.com are specialized in flight compensation and refunds and have helped more than 12.000 passengers.
If you want to buy airline tickets and want to find the best fares, there are several things you can do yourself. You can start by following the guide below:
Think about the timing when you buy airline tickets
Timing is one of the things that are important when buying airline tickets. You will find that airfare increases depending on how much demand there is for them. As a general rule, airfare will be at its highest when there are eight to ten weeks to the departure date. If you want the cheapest flights, you should book in good time- and especially if you are traveling in high holiday season. If you are planning summer travel in July or August, it may be a good idea to book flights already at the beginning of the year. Often the airlines choose to sell the cheapest tickets first. So during summer months and holidays, the demand is more and therefore higher airfare prices. Thus, it is better to not book flights the last minute. With the right timing, you can get generally cheaper flights.
When you book well in advance, you can also be lucky to find cheap flights where the travel time is also shorter and better. A short travel time is often something you appreciate when you are on your journey. If travel time is not something you want to prioritize, then you can find good deals for a longer trip where there are several stopovers.
There is also another benefit of booking a flight well in advance. You may be lucky enough to find departures where you fly with your favorite airline where comfort is higher than with certain low cost airlines. It can make long flights more pleasant.
The cheapest days to fly
When traveling, there are often specific travel days that are more popular than others – and this can also be reflected in the airfare. In many cases, the cheapest days to fly are Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Saturdays, compared to e.g. Fridays and Sundays. Therefore, consider to fly on off peak days to get the best prices possible. There may also be cheaper flight prices if you choose the very early or late departures.
In other words, you could save money by booking a flight on an unpopular travel day of the week. The more flexibility you have when traveling, the better options you have when you book a flight.
Optimize your search for flights
There are other ways to find flights than checking individual airlines’ websites. If you want to compare airfares from different airlines, you can start searching sites such as Expedia, Momondo, Google flights, and Kiwi. Here you can often get a good and quick overview of flights to destinations around the world, and you have the options to filter the destinations, price, travel date, and time. This can save you time and once you have found the flights you want to book, you should always check the airline’s own website as well. Sometimes, comparison sites and travel agencies show tour operators’ prices. Therefore, it can be cheaper if you buy tickets directly through the airline.
Departures from different airports
In some city destinations, there is more than one airport nearby. Therefore, if you can be flexible with the departure and/or arrival airport, you have more flights to choose from and more likely to find a better deal. Of course, this can mean longer travel hours to the airport or more expensive transport to the airport. For that reason, this idea has to be thought out in regards to travel time and costs.
Clear your cookies when searching
Every website uses cookies. It is a small file that monitors how individual visitors use the website. Therefore, if you are on a page several times and check a specific route, it detects that you show a particular interest in this flight route. This can result in an increase on the flight prices.
If you want to avoid this, delete your browser history and cookies when you visit the travel page. That way, you can search anonymously – and without cookies affecting the prices you see.
Last minute flight deals
Before the Covid-19 Pandemic, last-minute flights were normally very expensive. The airlines assumed that people that bought last-minute tickets were people that had no other choice than to buy the airfare, like business travelers. But airlines have changed their ways, by putting up cheap fares a week or less before the travel dates to urge people to hop on a plane and take spontaneous trips.
A brief summary on what you need to do to find better airline tickets
When you look for your holiday flights, whether it is for a domestic trip or international travel, there are many factors to take into consideration to find a cheap flight that suits your budget.
- The timing of your ticket purchase can be crucial. You should book a flight well in advance.
- If you fly on weekdays, they are usually the cheapest dates. Fridays and Sundays are popular travel days – thus more expensive days to fly.
- Search more efficiently through travel search engines. Then compare your result with the airline’s own price. That way, you can ensure that you have the best price possible.
- Which airports can you take your trip from? There may be cheaper airfares, departing from a nearby airport.
- Search anonymously online. Whether you are searching from your mobile phone or computer, delete cookies and your browser history before looking at your flights.
- Check out last-minute flights deals, sometimes airlines will drop the prices right before departure to fill in all the available seats.
Read more about your air passenger rights if you buy a flight where the airline has overbooked your flight: Rights when overbooking
Create your case and get expert help to collect your compensation: Air-Delay.com
