This article has tips on how to watch beautiful sunsets from a plane while flying for less! Photo by: Evan Berman

I frequently write about my travels, most of which involve flying. Most people assume that flights are the most expensive portion of the trip. In fact, if you know what you are doing (and don’t mind flying economy every now and then 😉 ), that is not the case!

Today, I’d like to go over how to find deals on economy travel, including strategies and services to use. Note that this, like most things in life, depends on how much time you are willing to put in to learning and searching. Want to fly business class for $500 internationally? Don’t expect to be able to find those types of deals just by going to United’s website and typing in your preferred destination and dates. Without further ado, let’s talk about your options:

Using Points and Miles:

I won’t go into too much detail here, but it’s worth noting that the best (and usually easiest) way to avoid spending a ton of cash on flights is by booking with points and miles. If you’re interested in learning more, check out this article for how to find award availability and this one for how to book certain flights using points. Even when you just book short domestic economy flights, in peak travel times, you could be faced with $400+ tickets each way. Ouch, time to use your points!

Fly at Certain Times and During Certain Days of the Week:

There is a persistent myth that it’s cheaper to book flights at [insert time and day]. That is no longer the case. However, the day and time that you fly absolutely affects the price you pay. If you want to fly Friday afternoons/evenings and Sunday afternoons/evenings, then you will pay the premium for that. If instead, you can fly on days that are less popular (think Tuesday-Thursday and Saturdays), then your prices will be much cheaper. Tuesdays and Saturdays are the cheapest days of the week.

Additionally, I know it’s hard to fly early or on red-eyes. I myself am by no means a morning person! That being said, you can usually find deals to fly at less popular times of day. Take the 5:30am flight instead of the 6pm flight and you may well save $200 even on a 2 hour domestic flight! Early morning and late night flights are generally cheapest.

This is not for everyone but if you are willing to take a more circuitous route, you’ll usually save as well. Want to fly from Miami to New York non-stop? So does everyone else! How about Miami-Dallas-New York on American? You might well end up saving money that way. Search around as it may differ, but often an out-of-the-way connection will make an itinerary cheaper than a non-stop unless you are flying to/from a hub.

Positioning Flights (especially from JFK):

Let’s say you live in a city that is not a major hub (ex. New York, DC, Chicago, San Francisco, LA, Houston, Dallas, or Miami) and want to fly internationally. While it’s still good practice to search from your nearest airport, it’s often helpful to look for an itinerary from a major gateway city and then figure out how to get to said city. New York’s JFK Airport is a great example. Because of how many airlines fly there, low fares abound.

I live in Charleston, South Carolina, by no means a major hub. Let’s say I want to visit Venice, Italy, for 2 weeks in June. I can leave and return on any day but want the best price. Here’s what that looks like when searching directly from Charleston:

Unfortunately, there are 2 stops in each direction, but that is not terribly surprising considering where I am flying to in this example. Photo by: Evan Berman

This is a perfectly decent price from a small US airport to a smaller European airport flying exclusively full service airlines. These flights include a checked bag and carry-on, so no need to pay extra for those. Now, let’s compare that with what appears when searching flights from New York. First, here’s the transatlantic portion of the trip:

$844 roundtrip in the summertime to a non-major European airport is a great deal! Photo by: Evan Berman

Keep in mind that this does not include the fees for checked and/or carry-on baggage. Let’s assume you add on $250 ($75 for 1 checked bag each way and $50 for 1 carry-on each way). That’s still only $1,094. The next step is to book the flight to New York:

A fairly typical pricing, assuming you’re willing to brave Newark ;). Photo by: Evan Berman

You’ll want to select the Economy flight to get seat selection, the ability to change flights, and the ability to earn miles. Even still, $227+$1,094= $1,321. That is $80 less than by searching directly from Charleston and you’ll get extra time in New York and not have to worry about long layovers in Europe. If you live further from the coast, such as in Tennessee or Ohio, the savings can be ever more dramatic!

Use Google Flights Features:

Google Flights is more powerful than many realize. A few highlights you should be aware of when booking paid flights are:

• Multiple Departure and Arrival Options
• Explore Feature
• Track Prices

Multiple Departure/Arrival Options:

Did you know that you can choose numerous cities for your destination and/or arrival? Sure, many times you’ll have a destination in mind but even then it can still be useful to explore other options. In the box where you type in the origin, there is a plus button. Hovering over it, you will see the description “Select multiple airports.” By clicking that, you can choose many different options:

This can be very helpful in figuring out the best deal without having to do 1,000’s of different searches! Photo by: Evan Berman

Using the knowledge of positioning flights, let’s try this out. Remember my idea of visiting Venice in June? Let’s do that, this time with the understanding that we can fly out of any airport on the Eastern Seaboard and into any airport in Italy. Here is the Google Flights search based on those qualifiers. As you can see, it’s cheaper and easier to fly into Rome-FCO from New York-JFK.

The return flight from Rome is even a non-stop! Photo by: Evan Berman

Google Flights’ Explore:

Explore is a visual option to see how much flights to various locations cost. Let’s take the above example and add a key modification. Once again, I am looking to take a 2-week vacation in June and care about price more than dates– I can make any date work in the month of June. Let’s imagine that I just want to go to Europe. Whether that is Paris, Venice, Barcelona, or somewhere in Scandinavia or the Balkans, I just want to get there as cheaply as possible! I should go to Explore at the top of the page and as explained in the above section, input as many airports as possible for destination. This time, I will change dates to flexible, with the month of June and 2 weeks selected.

If you really aren’t picky, you can select all and any time in the next 6 months will be shown! Photo by: Evan Berman

Here is what this map of options would look like:

You even get a small picture to help decide if a destination is worthwhile ;). Photo by: Evan Berman

Note that you can scroll down on the left side to find the dates, how many connections there are, and how much each city would be. By clicking on a city, you are taken to the flight selection to examine which airline, etc. you would be using.

This can be very helpful in deciding where to visit and obviously should you wish to visit Africa, Asia, Oceania, or somewhere in the Americas, you can do so as well!

Track Prices:

Let’s say that you have decided that you want to fly from point A to point B on a specific date and flight. Unfortunately, the price is fairly high and you want to wait and see if it goes down. You can sign up for email alerts every time there a new price. For example, I was looking at a flight from Minneapolis to Charleston when I thought I needed to return from there on a recent trip. Here’s the summary of the emails that I received:

I certainly hope that I would have booked the $222 flight and not waited for the $372 price, had I needed this flight! Photo by: Evan Berman

For those curious, this is what the body of an email looks like:

The United flight had a tremendous price drop, causing it to edge out the American flight for cheapest. Photo by: Evan Berman

Unfortunately, you will not usually be able to tell if these price drops are to stay or not. That being said, savvy readers will understand that this practice can be deployed even after you book your flight. That is the subject of the next tip:

Rebook for Less:

One trick that I’ve used a few times over the years is to watch the prices of a flight that I’ve already booked. You can take the advice from the previous tip of tracking prices and wait to see if your flight (or a similarly convenient one) drops in price. If so, you may often cancel and rebook.

Note: if you cancel after 24 hours of the initial booking, you will almost always receive a flight credit back. If you are concerned that you will not travel with the carrier again soon, this might not be a worthwhile pursuit. Keep in mind, you can repeat this. Let’s say your initial credit expires in 3 days and you cannot use it for any legitimate travel. Why not book travel for 6 months from now (can be anything, even a random route you are highly unlikely to fly) and then decide to cancel again? Don’t do this frequently and you can get away with it. As always, try and stay under the radar if you are doing something that a company/airline does not want you to do!

Sign Up for a Paid Service:

This is probably the easiest way to find deals, at least when you are starting out. It’s hard to search enough routes to find every flash sale/discount. There are many different options, price ranges, etc. but my recommendation would be Thrifty Traveler Premium. Both Thrifty Traveler and Going (formerly Scott’s Free Flights, probably the most well-known service) offer free options but if you want instant notifications and for all classes (most free options only provide economy deals), go with Thrifty Traveler Premium Plus.

I currently have and use this subscription and have gotten tremendous value out of it. For those wondering, I receive nothing should you sign up for this site. I simply believe it is the best option for paid cheap flight services. As a bonus, you will also receive points and miles deals (including Delta SkyMiles and American AAdvantage Miles deals), which can be helpful for beginners or those who do not have time to conduct many searches.

Summary:

This is by no means a complete list. For example, did you know you can save money when flying from Point A to Point B by having an itinerary that looks like this: Point A-Point B(get off)-Point C? That’s called Hidden-City Ticketing and is very much disliked by airlines (though it works!). That being said, hopefully these will give you some pointers on how to find discounted flights. As always, let me know of any questions! What was your best deal on an economy flight?

Evan