How to find the world’s cheapest Flights? Our Strategy.
It takes a lot of practice to be skillful at something you are passionate about. Travelling is no exception. Finding the cheapest flights around the world, not only enables us to travel more, but is also conserves our cash flow which allows us to ‘experience more’ once we land.
Below is an overview of the cost-cutting strategies that we use to purchase the world’s cheapest flight tickets. Of course, these rules are not sketched in stone because as we all know, costs, airlines, weather patterns, peak/off seasons differ regardless of where you are around the world. Therefore, it’s a common scenario for a country to be experiencing peak season whereas another surviving through low season. This will affect ticket prices and thus your bottom line.
Step #1: Determine where you want to go – EARLY!
If you plan out your travel itinerary early in a proactive manner, this will provide you with the greatest amount of time before your departure date to find the cheapest fares. Although last minute flight sales are still relevant, try not to rely on these fares because you’ll never be guaranteed of finding exactly what you want with only a day or two before your intended trip begins. With an increasing number of budget airlines in different regions of the world, it’s becoming more important than ever to plan early because their flight fares tend to become more expensive as it get closer to the date of travel. If you wait until the last minute, budget airline fares become quite similar to national carrier fares and thus, there is no advantage in taking a budget carrier if their prices are similar.
Step #2: Identify the Closest Airports to the Destinations that you want to see.
Once you know exactly where you want to go and what places you want to explore, start investigating which airports are near your points of interest. One of the ways we have found and purchased cheap flight tickets over the years is by seeing if the tickets to all airports in the vicinity are the same price. This is best explained using an example:
Let’s assume you want to visit Tokyo, Japan. You initially conduct an internet search and the flights seem quite expensive, with no real ‘deals’ to speak of. Instead of booking right away and accepting an inflated fare you take a closer look at the airports in the vicinity of Tokyo and you discover that Japan actually has two major airports Narita and Haneda. After some more research you also find out that most of the flights going to Narita are serviced by ‘non-budget’ airlines that typically charge top dollar for their fares. The second airport, however does offer some of these same prices but it also has budget carriers servicing flights as well. You complete a price searches using a price comparison sites like www.cheapAir.com, cheapOair.com and www.expedia.com only to discover that AirAsia offers the same trip for a $300 discount. Before booking, you learn that the budget airport will cost an additional $10 USD to reach the city centre because it’s a bit farther than the ‘non-budget’ airport. This will result in a slight reduction in your total savings from $300 USD to $250 USD per passenger. Pretty good savings nonetheless.
The big idea here is not only to consider budget vs. non-budget airline prices but also to consider the fact that the fares flying to one airport might be totally different than fares to another. If the flight you find is considerably cheaper, this gives you the added option of determining whether the added ground transport to the city center is worth the time and effort of your reduced air ticket. If they’re not, opt for the more expensive ticket for the added convenience.
Step #3: Use the World’s Best ‘flight’ Price Comparison Sites.
Once you have determined where you would like to go and what airports you would consider flying into and out of, then it’s time to use the world’s best flight websites to find the cheapest fares on the market. We personally book most of our fares through ‘flight’ price comparison sites. They not only find us the cheapest prices, but they also save us the TIME that goes into searching individual sites. Many tourists forget that ‘time is money’ when it comes to planning a trip. Here are some examples of websites that we use to find the world’s cheapest flights:
www.expedia.com www.cheapAir.com www.cheapOair.com
Step #4: Still not satisfied with the price?? Track Prices on Price Comparison Sites (Using the +- 3 day rule)
Let’s assume you have already compared the following price comparison sites (www.expedia.com, www.cheapOair.com, www.cheapAir.com) and you still are not satisfied with the prices you have seen. Another strategy that we sometimes use to find the world’s cheapest flight prices is to search using ‘flexible departure day searches’. Here is an example:
Assume that you want to travel to Tokyo and you would like to depart on Sunday morning. You search for Sunday morning flights and they are very expensive. By planning your trip with a ‘flexible mind’ and a ‘flexible schedule’ you might be able to get around this by allowing the price comparison sites to look for the cheapest flight prices up to 3 days before and 3 days after your initial intended departure date. Flight prices are not the same every day of the week. Therefore, a Saturday departure might be a few hundred dollars cheaper than your initial flight plan for Sunday morning. If you have strict flight dates, then skip step #4 and proceed directly to step #5 below.
Step #5: Add Discounts and Promo Codes to Cheap Online Flight Bookings
Once you have found the cheapest flights for your intended dates of travel using world’s best price comparison sites such as www.expedia.com, www.cheapOair.com and www.cheapAir.com then try to get even further reductions using their promotions. This can even bring down the cost of a rock bottom flight deal even more. Here are some examples below that we have used over the years to secure the cheapest flights around the world. Hopefully one of them can save you some cash the next time you want to find a flight. If you you have already found a cheap ticket using www.expedia.com, www.cheapOair.com or www.cheapAir.com then try applying some of the deals below to your quoted fare to see if you can get it even cheaper!