by You are probably overpaying for flights, and it’s not your fault, airlines are hoping that you will, and in fact, they’ve gotten excellent at making sure, you pay too much, but there are tricks for cheap flights to beat Airlines at their own game. I’ve used all of them to save over $19,000 on airplane tickets, which has enabled me and my family to travel to places that we only ever dreamed of.
I will break down easy and legit flight booking hacks that Airlines do not want you to know, and number seven is seriously like a real-life cheat code. I’ve taken many flights in my life. My wife and I traveled all over the world together, largely thanks to these 12 tricks that I’m going to tell you today.
If I had to pay the entire price for all those airplane tickets, we would rarely leave our home country. Make sure you stick around to the end for a very exclusive limited-time opportunity.
Table of Contents
12 Tricks to get cheap flights:
1 Delete Cookies
The first step is to eliminate cookies from your web browser. Have you encountered a scenario where, after researching a common household item such as a chicken harness on Amazon, and the day after you see YouTube advertisements for the same product? This is what cookies do, which allows brands to monitor your browsing behavior and suggest products or tailor advertisements accordingly.
Unfortunately, the airline industry uses cookies as well. Airlines employ cookies to identify frequent flight searches and increase prices, expecting imminent bookings. To counteract this strategy and secure optimal discounts, it is advisable to open your browser and delete the cookies or create a new incognito browsing window.
2 VPN
The next thing we need to do is download a VPN. It is a virtual private network that masks your IP address unless you pretend to be in places you’re not.
It is in high demand among people who are trying to stream Netflix shows from other countries, but a little-known fact is that VPNs are also helpful for booking cheap flights, and they can save you tons of money. I use Surfshark VPN, but a couple of other good ones are Nordvpn and Expressvpn.
Flights are priced differently depending on what country you’re looking at them from and when you look at a flight in a different country it may end up being cheaper than looking on that same flight in your own country.
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3 Google Flights
Many people search for flights by going directly to the airline’s website. They input their departure and arrival airports, with specific dates, and accept the results. What I do and want you to do is stop that right now, instead, you’re going to go to Google Flights. It is simply a search engine for flights. It aggregates flights and prices across most Airlines, and it recommends itineraries based on your search parameters.
The simple way to use it is to plug in your departure and arrival airports and dates and hit search. You can also add filters to enhance your search, such as airline alliance price maximums, departure and arrival times, and select the itinerary you like, and then Google will give you options on where to book.
So, this is a search engine, not a booking engine. You’re still going to end up booking directly with the airline, but Google is putting the power in your hands because you have way more information, and based on the filters you’re using, you can do things like make your itinerary nonstop. So you will not get a three-leg trip that may look cheaper, but it’s a lot more cumbersome and difficult.
I: Best price days
One of my favorite features in Google flights is the date grid, which shows you optimal pricing based on shifts in departure or arrival dates once you’ve searched click date grid and Google highlights the best price days in green.
II: Be flexible with dates
What you’ll notice is the more flexible you can be about when you travel the more potential savings you can rack up, and I know that’s not realistic for everyone you may have set vacation dates but if you have any margin leaving even one day later or one day earlier it can add up to huge savings.
Did you know you can also search up to five different departures and arrival airports in Google Flights at once so when I search Google Flights, I’ll punch in a bunch of separate airports within a 2-hour drive from me, to see if any of those are cheaper than my closest airport. Best-price days and flexible dates are some of the best tricks to get cheap flights.
4 Google Explore
So, let’s say you lack expertise in geography or flight routing. How do you know which additional airports to search for? Let me show you another incredible feature of Google: let’s say you want to go to Europe, and maybe you’ve got a particular City in mind, but the prices you’re seeing are outrageous.
Instead of searching for flights to a specific European city, like Frankfurt, try searching for flights to Europe in general. This approach can help you quickly identify cheaper destinations. We do this all the time, but it could also give you some ideas on how to get across the pond cheaply if you remain determined on that particular destination.
There could be inexpensive options to get there in many international destinations. Continental Europe is a perfect example of how these flights to neighboring countries can be incredibly cheap. I can’t tell you how many $20 RyanAir flights I’ve taken from one European country to another. The combination of exploring and date flexibility has saved me thousands of dollars.
The Google Flight and Google Explore just shared assume that you have time and interest in searching for flights, depending on when you’re searching. It may not have visibility to great deals, but the right timing is still a factor, and You’re probably not going to be searching every day.
5 Book One Way Flights
The main reason I book flights one way is that I just never have a game plan while I’m traveling but, another reason you should book one-way flights is that it’s actually cheaper.
When you book a round trip you’re usually booking that round trip with a single airline, and they’ll only show you return flights on their airline, whereas if you book one way at a time, it opens up a whole new bunch of possibilities for the return flight, which at the end of the day can help you save.
A tool called Kayak Hacker Fare can help you find two one-way flights. You just put in where you’re going, and it’ll help you find the best flight there and back, usually on different airlines, to help you save.
6 Faredrop
If you knew, you could have the best flight deals put in front of you when they’re happening without doing all this research. You’re sitting at your desk checking off your to-do list for the day, and a notification pops up for a flight to your dream destination for 80% off with a flight deal alert service like Airdrop.
You can set up your preferences once, and then the deals come to you as they occur. Here’s a Faredrop that works. By the way, this is not sponsored. You set your preferred airports and destinations, Faredrop sifts through thousands of flights daily for deals and mistake fairs, and actual humans review these deals.
You get the deals sent directly to your phone or email, and if you like how it looks and the dates work for you, you book it, and I know what you are thinking, okay? BD, what’s the catch? Are these flights with legitimate Airlines? Am I booking through some random third-party service?
It is all legit; this is not a booking service, it is a service that researches you. You will still need to book directly with the airline. This type of service is exactly how I was able to start traveling internationally consistently. My first flight deal was a trip to Northern Italy for less than $500 round trip. We found comparable prices for flights to Morocco, Southern Italy, and Bavaria.
Each time, we saved over half the cost. Surprisingly, we do not live near a major airport. If you live near a major Airport the deals can be far more significant. Annual membership to Faredrop costs $99. However, if you use it to take advantage of even one deal, more than pays for itself. This app is working only in the USA and Canada.
7 The 24-Hour Rule (Best tricks for cheap flights)
My next strategy involves something Airlines hate. The 24-hour rule in the United States is a regulation that guarantees you can cancel a flight within 24 hours of booking. This 24-hour cancellation policy means you can book a great deal on the spot and cancel it within 24 hours for a full refund if it doesn’t work out.
I have used this to my advantage a couple of times when I couldn’t make the exact dates that I had found work okay and canceled a full refund another time I discovered a better deal to the same place.
The next day, I booked that flight and canceled the first one. Boom, full refund. This was like a cheat code, a doover button for finding cheap flights.
To take advantage of the 24-hour rule, the flight must depart more than 7 days from the booking date, and you reserve directly with the airline. Unless you follow these two steps, you will not be eligible for a refund.
Important Tip: do not pay for baggage at the time of booking. If you cancel that flight within 24 hours of booking, the fine print may say that baggage fees are nonrefundable! I learned that the hard way with Air India.
8 Travel Rewards Credit Cards
My absolute favorite way to save money on flights saved us $6,000 this year alone. It’s the technique, I use to take my family from the US to Austria in Austria Airlines business class for only $500. It’s strategically accumulating airline miles earned through travel rewards credit cards.
9 Mistake Fares
To get the cheapest flights, you will need to track down mistake fares. So a mistake is fair when an airline makes a silly mistake and gives a cost-effective deal. This can happen if the airline hits the wrong button, has a currency conversion issue, or gives the new guy too big of a job on his first and last day.
The thing about mistake fairs is that they’re not up for long because airlines will catch their mistake and fix it before too many people can book that crazy cheap flight. The most mistaken fare will be available for maybe a couple of hours.
The good news is that several companies monitor mistake fares and can notify you when they arise. My favorite website for discovering mistake fares is Going (formerly Scott’s Cheap Flights). So Going is a deal-hunting website that not only helps you catch mistaken fares but also looks out for the best deals for your airport year-round and helps notify you when they arise.
Going (formerly Scott’s Cheap Flights) isn’t the only site that does this. There are a bunch of other popular ones, like Airfare Watchdog.
10 Stopover
It’s a way to get two trips for the price of one. I mean, think, it’s a way to get two trips for the price of one, you’re flying to two places; why not explore both of them Iceland Air has a program that’ll help you arrange a stopover in Iceland on your way to or from Europe for absolutely no additional charge. Want to find even cheaper flights with stopovers? Check out Airwander.com!
11 Budget Airlines
Similar to stopovers, another way to get more destinations out of your trip is to use budget airlines in foreign countries globally. There are budget airlines you probably haven’t even heard of that offer only the bare-bones basics.
Numerous airlines don’t even appear in search results for things like Google Flight. So to book with them, you need to go to their website. Here’s a list of budget airlines in each region of the world. So next time you’re on one of these continents, make sure to bust this the great thing about budget airlines is that with them, you’ll be able to visit different countries within a given continent for almost nothing.
Check out this example of Ryanair. If you were in Ireland and then wanted to check out another part of Europe, you’d be able to go from Dublin, Ireland to Bucharest, Romania, for only 16 bucks do you know how far that is that’s the other side of Europe. There are tons more like that, some even cheaper, especially in Asia.
12 Skiplagged.com
Important Notice: It’s become very risky to use because airlines have been cracking down on the practice.
All right, I have one more tool to tell you guys about. But this one’s controversial. It’s still technically legal, even though airlines frown upon it, and there have been multiple lawsuits. The tool in question is Skiplagged.com.
So Skiplagged is a site that kind of exposes a loophole in airfare pricing. What it does is it finds hidden city flights and what a hidden city flight is, it’s when you book a flight but instead of flying all the way through to the final destination you get off at the layover and that’s your final destination.
You don’t complete the full flight that you vote for, and you might be asking me how in the world this saves any money. It sounds like you’re actually losing money by not taking the last leg of your flight. Wouldn’t it be cheaper just to fly directly from your first destination to the one you’re trying to go to but hold on a second that’d be all too simple, alright so let’s pretend you needed to go from Boston to Houston that sounds like a horrible trip.
I don’t know why you do it but in this situation, you got it so that trip from Boston to Houston is priced at 240 USD meanwhile another flight goes from Boston to Orlando, and it has a layover in Houston, and that flight costs 180. The reason for the price difference is that Boston to Houston is seen as a business path whereas Boston to Orlando is seen as a recreational path.
The airline knows that the majority of people flying from Boston to Houston are entrepreneurs who are going to Houston to close on the deal of the century they’ve got the money to spend on an expensive flight, and they are not afraid to spend it and the Orlando flight is going to be lower because the airlines know that this is going to be mainly families going on vacation, and they’re not going to want to break the bank.
So the purpose of Skiplag is to find those flights where getting off at the layover is cheaper than just flying directly there. The crazy thing is airlines hate it so much that Skiplagged caught onto this loophole that United Airlines sued them luckily they lost the lawsuit and, you can continue to trick airlines at their own game using this site.
So yeah, these are the tricks for cheap flights. Happy flying, my friends.
