A pretty common question among everyone who visits this blog is: How to find cheap flights to anywhere? In fact, the main reason why a lot of people that I know don’t travel is that they don’t know how to search for cheap airfare properly or how to find cheap flights to anywhere in the world. It’s for this reason that I decided to give a top 5 basic steps to learn something and make a better search.
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Everyone has their own way to make their searches or search engines that they prefer in order to find cheap flights in the US or to anywhere. Here I try to explain some basic steps that could be applied almost to any engine.
How to Find Cheap Flights to Anywhere: Start with your favorite search engines
I must admit I’ve been testing my cheap flights search skills and searching for cheap tickets to travel to Europe for a long time now. My favorite search engines and the ones I use the most are Skyscanner, Kayak, Google Flights, and Kiwi. In my case, I always start with Skyscanner, since its the one that gives the most options when you’re looking for cheap flights, such as finding flights anywhere from your home airport and the option that allows you to see when you can find the cheapest flight. The other engines I use also helps to do what comes next…
How to Find Cheap Flights to Anywhere: Subscribe to Price Alerts
How to find cheap flights to anywhere? When you subscribe to price alerts you will receive e-mail notifications of the price changes that your flights suffer. This helps to have a record to know when is the best moment to buy this flight. There are some myths that says you should buy on specific days, weeks or months to get a cheap flight.
My experience since I use price alerts is that all these myths are false: I bought a roundtrip ticket from Barcelona to San Juan, Puerto Rico for 399€ (cheapest price registered) a Friday night (when the myth says that Fridays are the worst days to buy and that the best price can be found close to midnight.) I found these flights thanks to Skyscanner price alerts.
How to Find Cheap Flights to Anywhere: Compare search engines
Usually, I compare all the prices that appear in all my search engines. For example: In the case of Kiwi, this one always brings up really good prices because it shows results that include low costs airlines, create its own layovers plus some difficulties making these layovers long sometimes. When you search and compare with other search engines you can consider facts such as if its really worth it to buy a Kiwi cheap flight with all its difficulties or if it is better to pay a little more for your comfort.
How to Find Cheap Flights to Anywhere: Flexibility is the key!
Among the alternatives that search engines such as Google Flights, Kayak, Skyscanner and Kiwi offer you can find how to make your dates or destination flexible. This is one of the reasons why I prefer Skyscanner. On this engine, if I want to find a destination just because I want to travel but I don’t know where I can use the “Anywhere” option and the “Cheapest Month” option to find results that help to save a lot of money.
My advice always is that, if you have some particular dates to travel but you haven’t figured out your destination, use the “Anywhere” option on Skyscanner to know how you can maximize your options and save. In the other case, if you have a dreamed destination you want to visit, you can use the “Cheapest Month” option to know when is the cheapest time to travel there. Doing this, you can make an efective saving plan once you have those cheap tickets.
Airlines have new deals to different destinations everyday. If you sign in to their newsletters, or even better, to their miles programs you will be able to receive all the offers and will have more opportunities to find good cheap flights. Doing this, you will always be updated on the ways to earn miles that help you travel for less or to get upgrades for your flights.
Some of my favorite airlines miles programs are the ones from Avianca, Delta, United, British Airways, Etihad Airways, Air France, Air Malta, and Brussels Airlines (which is part of the Miles and More programs shared with other airlines).
Using Avianca LifeMiles, I was able to find a flight from Guatemala (in that time I was dying to visit Antigua Guatemala) to Bogotá, Colombia for which I only had to pay taxes.
Ticket to Adventures / Piia
Thank you for sharing these tips and tricks, a great beginners guide to cheap flights! Sometimes I do struggle with this myself too.
Alina
The tips I have: 1)follow all of the cheap flights bloggers on Facebook, who post about error fares and act fast! 2)use Matrix to find other dates except for the announced ones 3)check kayak, momondo, tripadvisor for seeing if there are any credit card promotions (sometimes can save up to $30 on every ticket, if you have that particular credit card).
That’s what I do, and I went from Europe to India for $145 return and Europe to Palau for $300 return 🙂 If you are flexible about where to go, you can find amazing deals!
Brenda
Exactly! flexibility is always the key!
Miranda
These are great tips! I’ve found it to be especially important to be flexible when travelling because the day you fly out/in really does matter in price!
Karin
Great tips! I also always start on Skyscanner. I never followed the advice to buy flights on a particular day – I find it varies a lot! I usually buy rather late, sometimes I get a good last minute price, other times not so much even if I buy early – it really depends! Also, changes in the high or low season…
Nicole
I’m not a traveler so I have no idea if this is true, but I’ve heard that the more often you check the prices of a flight, the higher they’ll go. I’ve also heard things like, they’re cheapest like, three Tuesdays beforehand or something ridiculous like that. I’m glad you cleared some of it up! Reading blogs meant to make travel easier always makes me feel like packing a bag right now 🙂
Brenda
You can definitely check prices, but another tip is to do it using an incognito window, that way doesnt leave cookies that might increase the price!
Thats ehy I recomend as well the price alerts
Icy at Creative Living Abroad
Great post! This is exactly how I’d go about hunting for cheap flights. I haven’t looked back since I’d discovered the month view in Skyscanner. Works like a charm :)))
Brenda
In fact! Im in love with their “cheapest month” feature!
Karen Palamittam
These are some really great tips.It’s so important to find cheap flights.Thanks for sharing!
Ava
What great tips. I had no idea there were so many ways to search for cheap flights. I don’t do a lot of air travel but I know flexibility is important. I love the idea of having a date in mind and searching for the cheapest location!
Charmaine
Well done! I think the ultimate key is really flexibility but that is not the easiest sometimes!
Agness of aTukTuk
These tips are very useful and practical! Flexibility always works for me but I will all try your tips!
Diran
Thanks, great tips. I plan on going for a one year nomad trip. This was helpful.
moumita
Such a great info!
Ryan Biddulph
Smart tips Brenda. Flexibility is a biggie. My travel agent aka wide is super flexible in checking different sites, and also in doing the layover bit. As am I. We just scored a sweet deal on tickets from NYC JFK to Bangkok.
Ryan
Manuel Mendoza
Nice tips for getting flight tickets at a low cost, I personally think that the best way to get more offers it’s if you subscribe to the newsletter of the airlines to know when there it’s going to be the days of low prices!
Michael
Wow! Such a great write up. Thanks for sharing. I’m always looking for ways to find cheap tickets.