Besides lodging, transportation can be one of the most expensive parts of your vacation. And while Google Flights is great, it’s not comprehensive. It doesn’t display all airlines (Southwest is notorious for not allowing API integrations with flight aggregators), and it usually only displays single airline or airline network tickets.
I won’t sugarcoat it; my way is time consuming and takes a lot of work. But it’s how I’ve gotten to travel around the world so affordably.
Subscribe to airline emails. At this point, I’m subscribed to most of the major airlines, but when I decide where I’m going next, I always subscribe to the local airlines. They most often share sales and new route info with email subscribers. That’s how all those cool travel websites get all their info. So consider all the wasted time between them seeing that email, writing an article about it, emailing you and then you seeing it. You’ll be able to move much more quickly on a deal (scoring better seat options) if you see it first.
Subscribe to airline deal aggregators. Scott’s Cheap Flights, Fare Compare and Airfare Watchdog are great for scoping out averages for cheap airline costs, but I haven’t had much luck actually booking using those tools. Based on what I said earlier, you usually have only about 24 hours to purchase a flight if you see it through those alerts.
Ask around. Do you have a friend of a friend who just visited your destination? Ask if they’d be willing to share how much they spent in airfare and make it a goal to beat their cost.
Do the Google Flights search. It’s a great place to start and I use it throughout my research. I just don’t use it as my only option. You can use the cheapest fare listed here as another benchmark for the goal fare you’re looking to best.
Search in an incognito browser. I’ve heard rumors that airlines are sophisticated enough to track your cookies and increase fares on the second or third time you search for the same route, but I haven’t seen this happen. Better to be safe than sorry though, so I usually do all my travel research in an incognito browser window.
Start research early, but don’t buy yet. As soon as I decide where I’m going and when, I do a quick search. I almost never buy at this time though unless I’m booking fairly last minute travel. Some people will try to make a recommendation of how far out you should book based on the average data, but these recommendations are exactly that: averages. You aren’t going to find the super cheap fares this way.
Don’t wait until the last minute. Occasionally, I’ve found a great last minute deal, but that is usually a wholly spontaneous trip where we have a free weekend and I’m looking for somewhere to go. My friend Rachel and I flew to NYC for the weekend after finding $160 round trip flights on a Thursday (set to leave the following day). Consider who flies last minute: business travelers. Business travelers are less cost sensitive since usually their company is footing the bill. If they have to be in Vegas for a client meeting, they will usually pick the fastest direct flight and airlines know that so they don’t usually drop fares for last minute until the day or two before. This kind of adventure can certainly be fun, it’s just not how I usually operate for a planned trip.
Weigh time versus cost. Sometimes the cheapest flight will be a huge pain. Three layovers and 24 hours of travel that would take you 5 as a direct non-stop, fork over the cash to save the headache.
Calculate fees. On that note, consider that the cheapest ticket might not be the cheapest based on all the extra fees. Some of the budget airlines charge for carry-on baggage, non-alcoholic drinks and snacks while in the air and sitting with your travel partners. Once you add in all your necessities, is it still the cheapest?
Start with your destination. Here’s the real secret. I almost always start with my destination. Is your destination flexible? If you’re doing Paris, London and Rome, is it cheaper to fly into Paris than London or Rome? Start there. If your destination isn’t flexible, does that city have multiple airports? Investigate which might have more options. Then I research (using Google Flights) which airlines fly in and out of those airports, even if they don’t fly to my home airport. Here’s an example. I was researching flights to Barcelona a few years ago. I found that TAP Portugal flew into Barcelona pretty affordably from many cities in the United States, but not my home city. So I matched up a TAP flight from Boston, Newark and Miami with the corresponding Delta flight from my hometown to those cities. Then I compared those totals with my other established baselines and found that if I used two different airlines and separated my round trip ticket into one way tickets, I would save a few hundred dollars. This is what takes time. This is what takes scratch paper to keep track of it all. But this is how I saved a coworker $3,000 last summer.
If this kind of shopping around sounds fun to you, I’d love to chat about other strategies with you. If it doesn’t, let me do the hard work and save you the money and headache. Shoot me a note with where you’re heading and when and I’ll get started for you.