If you have to travel during a busy time like Christmas or during school holidays, then definitely book early, because these tickets don't usually go down in price, only up!
The best time of the year to score the best prices is usually September and January.
- Search for plane tickets one at a time even if you’re flying with a group.
Airlines often sell multiple fare classes at different prices, with a couple of seats in each category. If there’s only one seat left in the lowest fare class and you search for four seats, most automated systems will show you the highest fare class for all four tickets. Try searching one at a time, just in case there are limited seats on sale. This way, you'll rest assured that at least some, if not all, of your tickets, were purchased for the lowest possible price.
If for some reason you don’t like your seats, or you don’t get all of the seats you want, most websites give you 24 hours to cancel flights with no penalty.
If you lock in the cheap fare and have the option to select seats, pick one next to an empty seat; then, immediately book the second ticket and select the seat next to the first one. It takes a little time and effort but can really pay off.
- Search for flights midweek.
Airlines tend to have lower prices from Tuesday through Thursday, so don't limit your searches to the weekends. Fare sales generally target the next 2-3 months of travel and have a 14-21 day advance purchase requirement.
- No need to avoid flying on the actual holiday.
Changing your departure or return date by one day can lower your ticket price substantially. Sometimes, flying on the actual holiday like Easter, Christmas, and Thanksgiving can get you the lowest fare, since you most likely missed the holiday, but you’ll cash in on the savings. The exception is three-day weekends like Labor Day or Memorial Day. Then, everyone is looking to fly on the actual holiday, so that's the best time to try to add an extra vacation day.
- Search for two one-way fares, even if they are on different airlines.
Some airlines charge extra for a one-way fare, but if demand is down, you can sometimes get better prices by buying two one-way tickets to and from your destination.
- Starting or ending your trip midweek on a Tuesday, Wednesday, or even Saturday, gives you the lowest fares as these are the days with the least passenger volume.
- Travel packages are sometimes less expensive.
If you need to book a hotel, in some cases packages offer better value than booking separately, since some big-name hotels will use this opportunity to hide their highly discounted rates in package deals to avoid having a discount associated with their name and lower their perceived value.
- Act quickly on low fares.
Airlines are required by the Department of Transportation (DOT) to offer 24-hour free hold on cancellations as long as you are booking your ticket seven days before your travel date. You'll have to pay first, then you get a full refund should you decide to cancel. This applies when buying directly from the airline. However, online travel agencies (OTA), such as Expedia or Orbitz, often offer the same courtesy.
I have booked a few hours before a flight, then hit a snag and was not able to make the flight, so I simply went online and canceled.
- Use second-tier airports.
JetBlue, for example, uses less traveled airports in big cities to lower their ticket prices by $100-$500.
- Follow your favorite airlines on social media.
Use Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and sign up for travel website emails. This will give you access to deals that airlines can't advertise directly. The fact is that airlines only have a certain number of seats they can advertise at a sale price. Once those are sold the flights go back up to higher tier prices.
- Sometimes it’s better to pay a little more for your ticket when it earns you more points.
So you have to compare and see if you gain more from the rewards or the lowest fare. Airline credit cards, as well as travel credit cards, offer free flights for signing up for their services, not to mention perks like priority boarding, free checked luggage, paying your TSA Pre Approved or Global traveler fees, offering insurance, and more.
- Layovers can be a huge benefit.
Even though a nonstop flight is ideal, you can sometimes save hundreds on connecting flights.
Some airlines like Aeromexico, Air France, China Airlines, or Icelandair offer free stopovers. A free stopover is when the airlines offer a night’s stay at their connecting hub and you don’t get charged for the benefit of staying there. The hub cities are where they concentrate their passenger traffic to save on airline costs. This allows you to save on airfare, visit another city, and make it part of your vacation.
- In the travel-industry, the calendar year is divided into three seasons: peak season (mid-June through August), shoulder season (April through mid-June and September through October), and off-season (November through March). Shoulder and off-peak seasons are when the travel prices are the lowest. This is when the weather is not ideal and the volume of tourists is lower, or when there is terrible press during political unrest. Destinations will lower their flight and hotel prices to attract tourists to bring revenue into the region, sometimes to half the price or less.
- If you miss flights often, you can claim back the taxes from your tickets.
- Travel when the weather is not ideal.
For example, the seasons in South America are the opposite of ours. It's winter in the Southern Hemisphere when we have summer; their off-peak season is about May through August. During the off-season, hotels, airlines, and tours are much cheaper.
- Travel after a natural disaster, a terrorist attack, political violence, or after some other tragic incident occurred.
That can get you better deals since people will be canceling their trips and being wary of going to an area under such circumstances. Before you go, make sure to check in on the situation, and wait just enough time till things stabilize. However, there is a short window of opportunity to benefit from the upside of the situation, as humanitarian aid or security forces rush in immediately afterward, and the area becomes safer than it will probably ever be again.
- Travel websites often give discounts to people who book flights and rooms together.
- Fridays and Saturdays are the most expensive time to book hotels and flights, while midweek tends to be the lowest priced.
If you have to stay somewhere during that time, stay in a business area. The rooms will be cheaper at that time since people are not conducting business on weekends.
- Request a seat in the exit row.
These seats have the most legroom and are assigned on a first-come, first-served basis.
- For a free upgrade, wait till the plane is full.
Then, ask or wait and give up your seat to people who want to sit together.
- If your flight is canceled, call the airline or travel agent instead of waiting in line with everyone else; it's faster, and you won't have to compete with the others.
You can also ask that your ticket be endorsed to a competing airline.
- If you have extra carry-on bags and you want to avoid being charged for them, be the last one to board the plane.
The staff will be on a time crunch to get everyone boarded and close the gate, or risk making the plane late for departure. This will help you avoid being hassled about your bags or being charged extra baggage fees.
- If the airline charges for water, a glass of ice is usually free, so you can order ice and wait for it to melt, or fill it up for free with water in the bathroom at the airport or on the plane, if it's potable.
- If you’re planning to take a long trip, consider the convenience of an around the world ticket.
You’ll get a bulk price for prebooking several flights at once. Specialized agencies are more knowledgeable, better equipped, and know how to deal with different airlines and connect unusual destinations.
However, if you prefer planning the trip yourself, it’s sometimes less expensive to book multiple segments on your own than to buy one around the world ticket and be charged higher fees. Around the world tickets usually cost you more than if you just book the trips yourself. Try comparing both options to see which is more cost-effective and gives you the options you're looking for.
- Keep Your Travel Searches Secret
The cookies in your browser are watching what you search for online. Therefore, when it sees you searching the same routes multiple times, your price will increase. The search website will try to scare you into booking the flight quickly before prices get even higher. You can bypass this by searching for flights in Incognito or private browsing mode to see the lowest prices.
In Firefox or Internet Explorer, hit Command (or Control if using a PC), Shift, “P”. In Google Chrome or Safari, Incognito is enabled by hitting Command (or Control if using PC), Shift, “N”. This will open a new browser window where your information is not tracked, and preventing the price from going up artificially as you search.
Every time you reopen an Incognito window, your cookies will be reset. So for every flight search, you want to close all Incognito windows and open a new one. This will prevent the site from remembering your previous searches and inflating your flight costs.
- Looking for tickets early mornings gets you better prices on flights, because people typically shop for trips in the evenings when they get off from work.
As people book flights, the prices go up as the supply of seats decreases. The following day, people may have buyer’s remorse; they change plans or they find better prices, and they cancel their flights to be able to get a free refund within the first 24 hours causing the supply of seats to increase every morning, which affects the algorithms that adjust the flight prices. You can see this scenario play out every day as flight prices increase during lunchtime (when people have time to shop for flights), then increase more at night (when people are off from work), and then drop the following morning (as people wake up and cancel trips before they start their day in fear that they might forget and get stuck with a ticket they don’t want).
- Don’t jump at the first price you see.
If you have luggage, it’s better to avoid budget airlines. For example, I bought a round trip flight from Los Angeles to Miami on United or Delta airlines: $305 for the flight and $60 for baggage (one free carry-on and $30 each way for one checked bag,), $365 total ticket price. On Spirit airlines, a roundtrip ticket was only $260, but the baggage fees were $260 ($65 for one free carry-on and $65 each way for one checked bag), $520 total ticket price. So to save $35 on the plane tickets, I would have had to pay $200 extra for my baggage.