How to find and book the cheapest flight tickets online ?

“The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only one page.” – Saint Augustine

Since I have been travelling a lot recently, especially since the last 10 years. I have come to discover certain loopholes in getting the cheapest flight tickets online.  In this blog I am going to sharing with my tricks of the trade to finding you the cheapest flight tickets online. There may be certain things that you might be aware of but a few tips will definitely blow your mind and get you flight tickets at the base minimum fare.

So i have broken it down to eight points that you must keep in mind when you are looking for flight and when you eventually book it.

1.  Incognito Mode –  Before you start typing your city of origin and your destination first things first is to go into incognito mode. The reason why I am stressing on this is that when you search for your flights in your regular window, the system stores this data on your computer in the form of cookies and cache.  This data is used by airline and travel website to sell you tickets at an inflated price and keeps you under the illusion that the rates for a particular flight is increasing day by day.   Also when there is an increase in search volume for a particular flight, the algorithm for airline website prices the flight ticket accordingly. So when you are in incognito mode this date is not available to anyone and they cannot use the information against you.    

2.  Flexibility  – So once your are in incognito mode something that is really going to help you find the cheapest flight tickets is Flexibility. I cannot stress enough on this point. If you are fixed and a rigid person just shut this window. For all you flexible people you have to be flexible with your

Dates – Flexibility with your dates can be a very big asset.   If you are on a fixed time schedule it can be a little difficult for you to get the best deal.  This is because airline companies prices their flights based on the days where they get maximum traffic, for example people usually tend to fly more over the weekend as they are relatively free and have to get back to work from Monday  and hence any flight around the world will be at its highest over the weekend and lowest during weekdays especially midweek like Wednesday or a Thursday.  One added tip to this is that try to search ad book your flights on Wednesday or Thursday websites usually inflate prices over the weekend as maximum website traffic is over the weekend as maximum people get free over the weekend.  

Number of Layovers –  This has to be pretty much straightforward. The more the number of layovers lesser the cost of the flight is going to be.  For Example a direct flight from Mumbai to London is always going to be more expensive than a flight that has a layover in Frankfurt.  So try to select a flight that has at least one layover for a long distance flight. 

Speaking of layovers they can be very tiring and exhausting, so for that I suggest you sign up for a lounge access program. Basically you buy a subscription with a company like Priority Pass and you get access yo unlimited lounges all over the world.  For Indians you get a Priority Pass membership with every HDFC Bank Regalia Credit Card that allows you to visit 3 affiliated lounges internationally in a calendar year. Pretty neat if you ask me      

Airlines  –  Tickets for same destination can vary depending upon the airline.  For example airlines like Emirates, Singapore Airlines and Etihad focus more on the passnger experience when it comes to Food, amenitites and their lounges. Where as airlines like Scoot, Air Asia and Ryan air focus more on just getting people from place to place at the cheapest price possible.  So this is basically upto you, where you want to invest your money.  

To sum it up flying from Mumbai to London direct on a Saturday with Emirates airlines is always going to be more expensive than flying with Turkish airlines on a Wednesday with a layover at Istanbul.  

3. When should you book your tickets ?   –  The rule of thumb here is that the closer you are to your flying date costlier the it is going to get. IF you book your flighttickets 45-60 days in adcance, nothing like it and I am sure you will get the best deal. 

 

4. When should you travel  ? –  Flying over the weekend is always going to be more expensive than weekdays so if you have flexible dates try and book your dates for weekdays only.  I use skyscanner for checking this as they have this amazing feature for showing you the cost of the same route on different dates. 

5. Where to Book ?   –  Usually I go to websites like Skyscanner and Kayak and most of the times get the best deals there. Skyscanner has this feature where you can check the dates for the same route on different dates, also it has feature where you can select your budget and shows all the destinations on the map to which you can travel to with your budget.   One feature about Kayak i really like is that it gives the rates for the same route for plus and minus 3 days. So if you have fixed date where you can travel this feature can help you make the most of it.

  

Insider tip – Sometimes on rare occasions the airlines website has a better price than skyscanner or kayak so just check the airlnes website before you confirm your flight 

6. Sign up for deals, promotional offers and other travel websites

Once or twice a year almost all airlines have flash sales where you can score some awesome deals on flights, so try and sign up for newsletters and emails so that your are up to date with any promotional offers that are active now. Websites like MakeMyTrip, Yatra and Goibibo have some amazing discount and cashback offers going on so sign up to all these websites so that your always in the loop. 

7. Miles Program –  Most of the major ailines have their very own miles program or ar affiliated with certain groups like alliance.  It is loyalty based reward system where the more you fly with a particular airline the more miles you generate and those miles can be used to get you discounts on your future tickets. So always sign up for those as it is completely free of cost.   Jet airways in India has really good miles program going on. 

 

8.  Google ITA Matrix – I’m sure most of you would not have heard of  the ITA Matrix. So this is a completely independent website operated by google. You can book your tickets on this website but you can definately look for the cheapest fares here. It is so intense that it looks into all the possible permutasions and combination for getting you from point A to point B.   After looking through all the flights it gives you the best combination which you can take back to the airline page and book from there  

I hope this gives you brief idea into how you can get the ceapest flight tickets online. I have also made a video about this to make things easier feel free to check it out below.  If you found this blog article interesting subscribe to my blog and YouTube channel for more travel tips and hacks and my travel experiences especially for the common Indian travller

Until then, Keep on Traveling