One of the most stressful aspects of travel is booking your cheap flights! Airfare is expensive and with consistent price variations. I often have FOMO and worry if I buy right now, prices could drop, and I just paid the most for the flight. 

You could say, “Maybe prices will drop if I wait a little longer.” If you take some simple steps, you can combat this irrational thought and get at least a good flight, if not the best cheap flight. 

I spent hours researching flights to get tickets at the right price. As I scour multiple websites and second-guess myself about the right buying time. Therefore, I would not believe it and wait for that perfect moment. Timing the market right seems like Christmas when you hit the time right, but 99 times out of 100, there will be.

On a recent trip, I purchased a one-way ticket on American Airlines for $206. The next day it was $149 with a BETTER flight. A couple of hours later, it was back to $206.

You can’t predict flight prices. The best day to book a flight is today. Research has shown via Google Flights that the average drop price is about $50. If you can find a fluctuation of about $50, you are probably getting the best deal with a good flight. 

Granted, this excludes any sales or mistaken fares.

You can’t second-guess yourself as someone who does not go a day without searching for airfare to regions worldwide. If you’re comfortable with your price, you must accept it even if airfare drops.

Cheap Flight Airline Tickets

We all want to feel like we got a great deal when traveling on an airplane. Therefore, if we believe we will get cheap flights, it will put us in a better state of mind before we begin our adventure.

Cheaper Tickets

Below we will discuss how to get airline tickets for cheaper. I have five steps I go through when I book flights frugally. I will work extra hard to find the best deals on international flights. Though with the plane ticket, I also consider the layovers to see if it is a flight deal.

Flight Deals

When purchasing your flight tickets, you must balance how much time you want to travel versus how much you want to spend.

Consider vacation packages where you can get a low-fare flight with car rentals and hotels. Rental cars will help you get from the airport as many rental agencies are nearby.

Cheapest Flights

Beware of the cheapest flights. Sometimes the cheapest flight tickets are better flights. If you are going on a business trip, you want to avoid going on the most affordable flight possible. There are sometimes exclusive deals for plane tickets through different airlines.

The way to get the cheapest flights is to look at historical data to forecast the best price for your departure date. The search results will tell you the cheapest time to buy on the cheapest days. However, it would help if you considered hidden charges you might not see upfront.

How to Find Cheap Flights and Airfare Deals?

Cheap flights are available to purchase online if you know where to search. The flight deals are only sometimes the cheapest with roundtrip airline tickets. Therefore, I will show you how to practice finding the cheapest flights and walk you through how I book my tickets.  

Step 1 Search for Deals

First, I’ll observe what deals I can find on Scott’s Cheap Flights, Holiday Pirates, or The Flight Deal. These discount websites present daily sales as they are happening. Sometimes there are, but most of the time, these discounts only apply to where I want to travel. 

After a quick research, I begin with the ITA Matrix, a fantastic tool for complex searching that every digital nomad should use. While it only searches significant airlines, it has a calendar option to see prices over the month and provides a solid baseline.

Being flexible with your dates is vital to booking cheap airfare. You can search for the best ticket prices over an entire month if you have open dates. Flexibility is essential to help you get the cheapest airfare. Being destination flexible can yield even more affordable fares. If you are not set on somewhere particular, utilize the “everywhere” option in the flight search engine.

But for this article’s purposes, I will use concentrate on destinations. 

Let’s observe the route from New York to Barcelona:

A glance at the cheapest flight for this route is $425. When you click through to choose your dates and booking options, you’ll get the complete picture:

Although the cheapest roundtrip flight is accurate, $425, this TAP Portugal flight has a long layover in Lisbon. However, it does return to a different airport than you left. For an additional $65, you can go roundtrip at a total of $490, you can fly direct with American or Finnair, departing from and returning to JFK with a much more pleasing general flight. 

Step 2 Compare Prices

Next, I will see what Momondo and Skyscanner have to offer and compare prices to see if any budget carriers are flying the route I want.

New York to Barcelona on Momondo:

You will notice Momondo’s cheapest flights are for $333 roundtrip. If you look at the details, Lisbon has an incredibly long layover. Therefore, it is not worth booking. Still, it is another motivation to check multiple booking sites. You might find a lower price elsewhere! 

New York to Barcelona on Skyscanner:

LEVEL and Vueling are some budget airlines Skyscanner brought up. While the price differential is small ($474 on budget airlines vs. $490 on significant carriers), Skyscanner displays different flight results worth checking.

Step 3 Check Regional Fares

Next, I visit Google Flights to search for regional fares. If I decide to fly to Barcelona, I can see flights to nearby airports with cheaper flights. It may be cheaper to fly into London, a central hub, and take a budget airline to Barcelona.

Though you might end up booking tickets on two different tickets airlines, you could save hundreds of dollars. I once booked a flight from London with British Airways to Chicago, saving me $200 instead of a direct flight.

In Europe, there are numerous options because there are many airports with budget carriers to choose.

You might not know which budget airlines fly if you aren’t a travel junkie like me. Therefore you will need to find out which airlines fly at what airport. You can always check the airport’s website to get a list of airlines.

Cheapest Regional Flights

Searching for the cheapest regional flights is placing your departure airport into Google Flights and the arrival airport as a larger region. In this case, you can put it in “Europe.” Therefore when you begin the search, it will provide you with a map view of the cheapest flights from your destination to anywhere in Europe:

I then search separately for flights from Lisbon to Barcelona on those dates. I discovered it was only a $57 roundtrip flight on Ryanair, bringing the total to $433.

Therefore, this saves $16-57 USD (depending on if you go with a budget airline like LEVEL or a primary carrier like American). Still, when you factor in immigration, checking into a new airline, possible delays, and your time, it’s not worth it. Therefore, this only produces something cheaper with highly long layovers.

Saving $57 is not worth an extra 20 hours in an airport. Though I have used this method to save money in the past, in this case, booking two separate flights isn’t worth it, so I move on.

Cheap Flights or Save Time

Even if the savings seem decent, you’ll still want to watch out for budget airlines’ notorious fees because they could negate any possible savings. These airlines usually charge fees for checked bags, carry-on luggage, printing your boarding pass, using a credit card, and anything else they can get away. Be sure to add up the cost of the ticket AND the fees to ensure that the price is lower than a larger carrier.

I use this method only if it saves me more than $150 and if there are at least 3 hours between connections. Since you’re booking two separate tickets, if there are delays on your first leg that cause you to miss your second flight, the airline isn’t responsible for rebooking you. 

Step 4 Visit the Airlines Websites

After searching these three websites, I’ll visit the airlines’ websites to see if there are cheaper deals. Airlines will increase there. In order to encourage consumers to book directly with them, airlines often have more affordable prices listed on their websites.

The airlines’ websites offer similar or more expensive fares, as you can see with this American Airlines flight (that ITA Matrix found for $490):

However, this is only sometimes the case; sometimes, I find cheaper fares when booking directly. A quick search of airline websites will ensure you’ve exhausted all your options. 

Step 5 Check Back in with your Cheap Flights

After I book a flight, I check back within 23 hours. You typically have 24 hours to cancel a flight without penalty. Right before that time, I’ll quickly search to see if there is a price drop. If there is, I will either rebook or keep my flight based on what I find.

Afterward, I no longer give it a second thought, even if there’s a sale two weeks later or I see lower prices pop up somewhere. You can’t know the future and when a deal will come. Therefore, you can only make your best decision with the information at hand when you’re booking.

You may spend 10 hours searching to find some obscure website that is $5 cheaper. Your flight will become $200 cheaper the next day. There may be a sale. The price may go up!

In the end, it is not worth worrying

First, you will become frozen with buyer’s remorse if you worry about future prices. You will never buy tickets on a flight because you’ll always wonder, “what if?” Ultimately, you’ll wait too long and pay more. Second, how much is your time worth? I could search more, but I use the extra time to enjoy life, work on my blog/vlog, or meet up with other expats and digital nomads. My time is significantly more valuable than a slight price drop will ever be.

If you spend over an hour booking a flight, you spend too much time. The entire process, from start to finish, takes me approximately 40 minutes. After that, I go back to my regular routines. I never second-guess myself on flights because it is aggravating if I do. 

Spend approximately 30-40 minutes to find a cheap flight at a price you can afford. If the price is still too much, then you should travel elsewhere. Book it, and move on with your life.

Atypical Last Thoughts – Cheap Flights

Researching flight deals can be time-consuming. Cheap flight deals can be taken advantage of if you take the above steps. Sometimes when I book cheap flights, I go to Google Flights and the best airlines’ websites. So while I have provided five steps, I only sometimes follow through to get the cheapest flights.

One needs to balance their work life when one searches for flights. The best flight deals are only sometimes cheap airline tickets. The best deals have better flight routes at a reasonable price.

You should search for cheap flights on the airline’s website to book flights when you search for flights. Sometimes cheap airfare can be found at the source.

Purchasing roundtrip tickets helps you bypass many headaches you may experience from flight delays. Cheap airline tickets should balance your pocketbook with the headache of possible layovers.

If you want to buy flights for your next trip, subscribe to my newsletter to learn about popular flight routes, tips, and tricks to finding other cheap flights. If you have any questions feel free to contact me here. I enjoy hearing from my audience and continue to provide added value to your experiences.

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