Take advantage of this trick to book the lowest price so you can be admiring the sunset knowing you got the best price on the flight! Photo by: Evan Berman

I fly a lot, both on points and with cash tickets. I always search first for flights via Google Flights for many reasons– for example, there are more booking options than any other search engine and certain features can be very helpful. Most people assume that after purchasing tickets, your work is done, the only remaining task is to board the plane and fly. That’s not true! I always recommend that you “garden your reservations.” I’ll talk about how to do this with hotels and car rentals at a later date, let’s focus on flights today. FYI this is not limited to Google Flights, though I’ll largely focus on that path.

How to Track Prices

Congrats you’re flying to A City. (man, I love that place!) You made sure to book something other than basic economy– could be economy, premium economy, business, or first, just so long as you do not opt for the cheapest basic economy flight. Now what? Keep track of what you paid for the ticket. Now, go back to Google Flights and select the “Track Prices” toggle under the cities.

What does this do? You’ll receive an email if the prices change. That’s an important point to clarify: whether the price goes down by $1 or up by $500, there will be the same subject in the email, “Your tracked flight to [city name] is now $[new amount]. The good news is that when you open the email, there will either be a green arrow to indicate a price drop or a red one to indicate a price increase. Here is an example of these emails:

Here is the email:

Rebooking:

Keep in mind two very important factors to consider before gleefully cancelling your existing flight for the new better deal: the cheaper flight may be less desirable or the price may not factor in all costs. What does that mean? Well, maybe you booked a flight on Delta and get notified of a price drop. If you cancel and rebook with Spirit, you can save $50. Is that worth it? Not to me! Alternatively, maybe the cheaper flight is on an airline with which you wish to fly. (Try saying that ten times fast!) However, the flight is a red eye (overnight) flight or otherwise is flown at a time that is inconvenient to you. The money saved might not be worthwhile in this case.

Additionally, when you consider the price listed, remember to add on the cost that you will need to spend, if you want to book that flight. For example, if you don’t have status or a credit card with the airline, you’ll need $30 per checked bag. If you want to fly a low cost carrier, those fees will be even more. How about factoring in the price to upgrade from basic economy to economy? Just make sure you are aware of what the total cost in, no matter what the email may say.

Real Life Example:

I recently flew from Charleston to Seattle. This was the start of my trip to Eastern Europe and I had a flight at 7:30pm PT so I needed to arrive in the early afternoon. The cheapest flight where I would arrive earliest was on United. As shown below, when I booked originally, the flights were $262.70 to get me from Charleston to Seattle.

That is a decent price, but I tracked the flights and when I saw they had dropped, I cancelled my flight. Why did I bold that? Well you might be thinking why would I cancel a flight, they aren’t nonrefundable! That’s certainly true and I advise against booking refundable fares as they are a waste of your money in 99.9% of circumstances. Instead, what happens (at least with United, American, Delta, Southwest, and JetBlue– Low Cost Carriers might differ) is you receive a credit for the amount of the original ticket price. The catch is you need to use this within 1 year of issuance.

Sneaky Tip: If you won’t be flying with that particular airline and the credit is going to expire, you could book a flight for roughly that amount as far out as possible, then cancel and get a new credit valid 1 year from that day. It’s not exactly encouraged by airlines, but this could be an option for you in a pinch!

When I cancelled my previous flight, I was issued a credit of $262.70. I used $166.69 of that credit to rebook the same flight for less. As you can see below, I have a $96.01 credit remaining.

Recap:

When you buy a plane ticket, always track the prices via Google Flights. As I experienced in March, it is easy to get a flight credit of $100 or more just by cancelling when you find a price drop. Next up: the conclusion of the Asheville Trip.

Evan