Booking cheap flights isn’t a science or an art. It’s too easy to get lost in endless myths and hacks, but do any of them really work? We’ve been traveling the world for years, it’s our job. And far as we’re concerned, the only way to save money on flights is to put the effort in. Do some research, be flexible and don’t be afraid to try new things.
In this guide we show you 15 easy things you can do to book cheaper flights, based on our experiences.
Our Experience
We lost count of how many flights we’ve taken a long time ago. It’s somewhere in the hundreds. Now, hotels are expensive, but at least we spend a lot of time them. Food is expensive, but it’s kind of essential for survival. It’s those eye-watering flight prices (just to spend a few hours inside a metal tube in the air) that often have the most depressing impact on our overall travel budget.
But over the years, we’ve fine-tuned a simple approach to booking flights offering good value. We always follow the same process, which basically involves going through each of the 15 tips we share with you below. The truth is, sometimes there’s nothing you can do about sky-high flight prices. But the rest of the time, you genuinely can save money if you’re willing to put in the elbow grease. Read more about us.
1. Be Flexible
Let’s start with our number one tip: being flexible is the golden ticket to booking cheaper flights. You can try a hundred other tricks, hacks or whatever, but you won’t get close to the savings you can make just by being flexible. We know it’s hard with work commitments, school holidays and life in general, but you stand to save a small fortune if you can give yourself even 3 days either side of your preferred dates.
Flight prices can change significantly from a Tuesday to a Thursday to a Sunday. If you have set dates, like Saturday to Saturday, you’re stuck with whatever prices those dates give you. But if you can say okay let’s try Thursday to the following Friday instead, you will see the biggest savings of all.
We never fly on specific dates. Instead, we try every single daily combination around the rough time we want to travel until we find the perfect match. Without exaggerating, we know we’ve saved thousands and thousands of dollars just by having the flexibility to choose cheaper flights on different days of the week both outbound and inbound.
2. Use Cash Back Credit Cards
We know what you’re thinking. Here comes the credit card sales pitch. No, not from us. We’re not those travelers who wade through endless credit cards trying to squeeze out every signing up promotion and deal (although that can save you a ton of money). It’s too much hassle to stay on top of and it affects your credit score anyway.
But with that said, just getting one basic credit card offering a % cash back on certain purchases ie. dining, online shopping or travel (with no monthly fee) is the easiest way to save money on flights. We use a travel rewards credit card to book all our travel because we get 3% cash back in the form of points, with no ties or fees. It’s essentially free money.
Let’s say you booked flights from JFK to Paris for $1,000 in July. That’s $30 back in your pocket to spend on wine and macarons. And for what? You were going to buy those flights anyway, so why not take the 3%? As long as you can guarantee paying off your credit card bill each month, this one is a no-brainer. Learn more.
3. Join Airline Rewards
We know airline miles – aka frequent flyer miles or points – as a topic can be overwhelming. In essence, you sign up to an airline-specific loyalty program (Emirates, Delta, Qantas etc) for free and fly regularly with that airline to accrue miles or points which you can later redeem against flight prices. If you want to up the ante, you can get an airline-specific credit card to earn more points. Here’s how they work.
Personally, we have mixed feelings about really committing to airline miles, but we know they do work well for certain travelers. You can benefit from fantastic perks like free seat upgrades, lounge access and of course redeeming points against flight prices eventually. But it also means you always have to fly with that specific airline and they might not offer many cheap flights in the first place.
Let’s say you’ve committed to a Delta airline miles credit card. Delta has a flight from Boston to Miami at $220 but Spirit flies the same route for $80. Which would you book? This is why air miles don’t work for the average person. But if you’re a frequent flier, a business traveler or you have a preferred airline operating out of an airport close to home, this is an easy way to save money and get those sought-after perks.
4. Fly Budget Airlines
Now we’re talking. This is how you save money on flights! We flew with so many budget airlines when we were broke backpackers traveling the world back in 2018 and 2019. Some of them sucked, badly. But others really weren’t so bad. And at the end of the day, you’re going up to 35,000 ft, watching a movie or reading a book and then landing. It’s a few hours, you can make it through.
If you’re serious about booking cheaper flights, you can’t be put off by budget airlines. Now you might be thinking well they get you on carry-on and checked luggage. And you’d be right. But guess what? So do almost all the major airlines these days. We’ve flown with some of the most famous and prestigious airlines in the world recently and we had to pay extra for carry-on and checked baggage.
Avelo Airlines opened a route from Raleigh/Durham, NC to Rochester, NY with $39 one-way flights. That’s a roundtrip of just $78 when we fly with just a personal item. It reminds us of being in Europe with Ryanair or Asia with AirAsia. We’ve also flown insanely cheap Transatlantic routes with Norwegian and Norse in recent years. How do we find them? Well, that takes us nicely into our next tip.
5. Use Search Engines
Low-cost flights do exist, you’ve just got to find them. And the easiest way to find cheap flights is to let a search engine do the work for you. Instead of going directly to an airline website to see what flights they have available (or worse yet using a travel agent with huge markups!), go to Google Flights or Skyscanner instead. They’re completely free to use, and they save so much time and effort.
What these search engines do is scan every airline and route (direct or with changes) for any given dates, then show you a list of options. So let’s say you want to fly from London to Singapore for two weeks in January. Put those parameters into Skyscanner or Google Flights and it will instantly give you a list of the best flight options by price and duration. Some will be direct and others will have changes.
The key is to learn how to use Skyscanner or Google Flights effectively. And trust us, it doesn’t take long. Just play around with the parameters and you’ll quickly get the hang of it. You can search by whole month to see the cheapest days, or leave the destination open ended if you just want some good old fashioned travel inspiration. This is the way to find flights, but there’s another step coming up next.
6. Book Through Airlines
Once you’ve found perfect flights on Google Flights or Skyscanner, see which airline operates the route and go direct to that airline website. We don’t recommend booking through a third-party vendor (like GoToGate, BudgetAir, Kiwi, CheapOAir etc). We used to book the cheapest possible option through whichever OTA was offering it. But we had a few bad experiences, so now we always book through the airline.
So in the example we used in the previous tip, let’s say Singapore Airlines has a direct but expensive route, whereas Etihad has a less convenient route with one change but it’s much cheaper. Check to see who is actually selling the tickets at those prices. Is it the airline (ie. Singapore and Etihad)? Or is it a third party vendor? If it’s the airline, go direct to the airline website and book those flights.
It’s very hard to contact a third party OTA and it’s even harder to make changes or claims when things go wrong. So booking through an OTA might look like a massive saving initially, but if anything goes wrong at any point before or during your trip, it could end up costing you a lot more down the line. There’s a reason they’re able to offer cheaper prices.
7. Make One Connection
Take away just one single layer of convenience and you can save a lot of money. Flying a non-stop direct route from your home airport to the place you want to visit is obviously the dream. But what if you could slash the flight prices in half simply by making one connection somewhere along the way? That includes airports closer to you and closer to your final destination.
We have a perfect example in our current set up. Raleigh/Durham has a direct flight to Paris, but it’s expensive because only one airline has the route so they charge whatever they want based on demand. There’s no competition. So the simple way for us to bypass this if we want to save money is to fly Raleigh/Durham to New York, then New York to Paris. It’s less convenient, but it’s much cheaper.
There are certain airports that you know will have cheaper long haul flights available. For instance anytime you go from the US to Europe, you should check flight prices from JFK, Boston, Philadelphia, Miami, Orlando etc on the east coast because low-cost airlines like Norse are driving prices down. And you can simply fly from your smaller airport to one of those major airports and take advantage.
8. Try Long Haul Layovers
One really fun way you can book cheaper flights is to outsmart the system on expensive long haul flights by hopping between your origin and final destination. Here’s what we mean: we wanted to fly London to Tokyo a few years ago but the direct flight was too expensive, so we flew London to Dubai, Dubai to Bangkok and Bangkok to Tokyo for less than half the price. And we stayed at each stop for a 4-day layover.
Of course this tip only works if you have plenty of time available and you can be flexible. It also means a lot more planning needs to take place for hotels, airport transfers and suitcase packing. But you can see more places for less money, what can beat that? So get back on those search engines, and see how you can city hop to your next long haul destination and save in the process.
9. Fly Basic Economy
Another totally obvious but entirely effective way to save vast sums of money when you fly is to book basic economy seats. To this day, it astonishes us how much it costs to upgrade seats on a plane. Why is a business class seat upgrade $5,000 for an 8 hour flight? Is it made out of gold and you get to take it home? They don’t even make it tempting. But that’s a story for another day!
Even the jump from basic economy to economy can cost you a hundred bucks on a short flight these days. The key is to pack light. When we travel domestically, we pack a small bag with a few days worth of gear and save the $50 (which ironically is more than the flight cost) upgrading to economy, just so we can take carry-on luggage aboard.
10. Check All City Airports
Did you know that lots of cities (especially in Europe) have a low-cost airline hub? Take Paris, which has 3 airports: Charles de Gaulle and Orly are closer to town with good transport links, whereas Beauvais is further out and has less convenient transport links, but it’s the hub for budget airlines. London’s budget airline hubs are Stansted and Luton, but Heathrow and Gatwick are far more convenient to the city.
The same can be said for Milan with Malpensa and Linate being better airports, whereas Bergamo is further out but it’s the low-cost airline hub. The point is, you can book cheaper flights if you land in a less convenient airport, as long as you don’t mind the extra effort it will take to get into town. As we’ve gotten older we tend to go for a slightly more expensive flight if lands closer to town.
11. Fly Inconvenient Times
How do you feel about waking up at 2:00am so you can make a 6:00am flight? Not especially excited, we’re guessing. But this is another easy way you can save some serious cash. Those horrible sounding early mornings and late night red-eyes are almost always cheaper than flights that leave conveniently between 11:00am and 3:00pm.
It’s all about demand. There’s not a whole lot of demand for a 6:00am flight, so the prices are lowered until they become tantalizingly tempting and people forget about how they’ll feel when the alarm clock goes off at 2:00am. We’ve done so many silly o’clock flights in our time and while they were painful, they also saved us a fortune.
12. Understand Seasonality
Seasonality is probably the biggest driver of price changes for flights throughout the year. If you try to go somewhere during its peak visiting months, you’re going to pay more for your flights because the demand is higher. Therefore, visiting a place in shoulder season or even the off season will result in cheaper prices. It’s a really easy solution.
Basically don’t fly to Australia in January, don’t fly to NYC around Christmas and don’t fly to London in August. Actually, don’t fly anywhere in July or August! Some of the most expensive flights we’ve ever booked were from the US to England in July and August for family events. Come on guys, let’s do June or September instead.
13. Book In Advance
Let’s move onto a controversial topic. How far in advance should you book flights both domestically and internationally to get the cheapest prices? Well, isn’t that just the million dollar question. If there was a simple answer, everyone would be doing it. But there isn’t. One thing we can tell you for sure is that booking last minute (a week or two before departure) is never a good idea.
There are so many factors that determine flight prices including seasonality, demand, how many flights per day, airline competition and so on. But with that said, we tend to book around 2-3 months in advance for domestic flights and around 4-6 months in advance for international flights when possible. Oh, and that myth about flights being cheaper on Tuesdays? Well it’s just that, a myth.
14. Singles vs Return Tickets
We always look at singles vs returns when researching, and there’s a very clear trend. Buying single tickets is better when we plan to visit multiple destinations or we want complete flexibility. Whereas, return tickets typically cost far less when we’re only going to one place and then going straight home. We always buy return tickets when we fly from the US to Europe because they’re cheaper.
We encourage you to check the prices for two singles and then compare against the return price for your next travel destination using Skyscanner and Google Flights. Then go to the airline’s website and do the same thing. You might be surprised at how significant the difference is, so make sure you go for the cheaper option. This is one of the easiest ways to keep costs down.
15. Set Up Price Alerts
Finally, another incredibly easy thing you can do in a matter of seconds that could potentially save you hundreds is to set up price alerts on any flight routes you’re interested in. This is another great perk to using search engines like Google Flights and Skyscanner. Once you set up a price track, you’ll receive an email any time the cost goes up or down. We do it all the time.
It’s one of those risk vs reward situations when you wait and wait and wait until pulling the trigger. The key is to get in when the price is at a point you’re happy with, rather than waiting too long and then the price jumps up. Once you’ve tracked enough flights you’ll notice trends and patterns, then hopefully you’ll be able to predict prices more easily in the future.
The Morgan Conclusion
There are so many easy things you can do to keep flight costs down for your next trip. Spending a little bit of time researching and making a little bit of effort can really go a long way to sparing your bank balance from taking a severe hit. Like we said at the beginning, sometimes there’s nothing you can do. Like booking last minute in peak season. But any other time, you can (and should) save.
Overpaying for flights is up there with our biggest travel pet peeves. We’d much rather spend that money on a nicer hotel, better restaurants or more cold beers and delicious wine. Follow our tips above and we’re confident you’ll be able to fly for less in future.
More Travel Planning
We hope our tips on how to book cheaper flights helps with planning your next trip!
Please let us know if you have any questions in the comments below.
Happy Booking,
Mark and Kristen
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Mark and Kristen Morgan are travel, hiking and photography experts. Over the last 6 years traveling full time, they have explored more than 40 countries and 30 US states.
Where Are Those Morgans has been featured in USA Today, Gestalten, Get Your Guide, CityPASS and Condé Nast Traveler along with various other publications. Read more about us.