One of the most common questions that people ask me is how I can afford to fly so much.  They ask what is the secrete to finding cheap flights all around the world.  If you search for that you’ll commonly see sites saying things like ‘how I flew to Africa for $100’ and ‘travel in business class for close to nothing!’.   What you’ll find if you go to those sites is someone telling you how they used their credit card points or their saved miles to book an award ticket and they only paid the fuel surcharge.  Although this method is workable and I’ve done it, what do you do if you don’t have any miles or are saving them for something else?  In this article I’ll show you the main ways I find cheap flights WITHOUT USING CREDIT CARD POINTS OR MILES.  

Anyone that knows me knows that I don’t like secretes.  I don’t believe in hording knowledge, which I started this site in the first place.  So here we go… This is exactly what I do:

 

The very first thing that I did was subscribe to Scott’s Cheap flights.  This website monitors flights from your region (if you chose the free option) or city (if you chose the pay option) to various places around the world.  They don’t sell flights on the website.  Its a great starting resource if you can plan your trips in advance and your dates are flexible.

Second I figure out what time of year I want to go to my location.  Do your research here.  You don’t want to end up in Costa Rica during the rainy season when you have to stay inside all the time, or Siberia in the winter.  So check the seasons to make sure you know when you want to travel.  I prefer shoulder seasons (the time between off season and high season) because flights are usually easier to find on the cheap.

Third I get on Google flights.  Simply put this is one of the most powerful tools for finding cheap flights.  You can put in your point of origin and your destination and click the calendar.  The flight costs will populate for the dates on the calendar.  Remember that it defaults to 4 day trips.  You can modify the length of the trip it searches near the bottom or by selecting a date range that fits your trip length.  At this point you can search through the dates looking for the lowest available flights.  Keep in mind that these may not be desirable flights as they could be up to 36 hours long.  But Google will make flight recommendations once you chose a date range.   Before selecting flights, make sure to click the ‘track prices’ so that you can easily come back to this date range later.  This will also alert Google to let you know when prices change… for the better or worse.  Once you’ve selected an appropriate flight Google will show you where you can buy your ticket for that price.   You now have your baseline price.  Make sure that you select ‘track prices’ before you leave the page.  

Fourth I head over to TripMasters.  A great resource for planning an entire trip.  I enter the place I’m starting and the place I’m going and select the dates.  At that point the site will put together a simple itinerary for your destination including flights and places to stay.  Often times they book ‘package’ deals which allow you to get places to stay for near the cost of the flight.  You can chose multiple destinations and make your trip more complicated and they will help you figure out logistics for all of it, offering things to do, different hotel choices, transportation options, and more.  You can also check other dates by selecting different date ranges from the top of the page.  You can change flights as well.  Once you’ve played with your trip for a little while note the price.  You can save the itinerary as well.  You should have a good idea how much your trip is going to cost now.  This is a second baseline.  From here on out you’re trying to beat Google flights and TripMasters.

Fifth is checking non-airline websites.  Start with Momondo.  This site often has great prices for international travel.  They have a wider search criteria than Google flights does and they search private sites that other search engines don’t.  For domestic flights head to Kayak.  After those two head to JustAirTicket.  Here you might find a few unpublished fairs.  Next head to Wego which isn’t based in the US so sometimes they have access to tickets that US sites don’t.  Finally see if one of the layover sites can help you like clever layover, air wander, and kiwi (for a review of these sites check out this link).  These sites often offer some very creative solutions to allow you more than one destination.  You should now have a very good idea what your flight is going to cost and where you should buy it.  (for more resources to check click here)

Sixth:  go to the source.  Often times you can get a better deal if you go to the airlines website.  And some airlines don’t publish fairs to the booking sites.  Make sure to check Southwest if you’re looking at Central America or the Caribbean.  Check to make sure that the price you’ve found on the other sites is the absolute lowest you can find.  (For a list of these sites click here)

Seventh is the hardest part:  waiting.  Hopefully you’re not in a hurry because the true secrete to finding cheap flights is knowing what a cheap flight is.  You can’t know that without monitoring the flights over time.  You’ll need to check on your flights over and over to be sure that the price fluctuations are in your favor.  That being said; be ready to strike when the iron is hot.  When you see a good or even great price be ready and buy the ticket on the spot.  This is by far the hardest part as once I’ve decided to go somewhere I want to book everything right then.  But it pays off waiting and watching in the long run.  

There you have it.  That’s how I go about finding some amazing deals to different places.  Here are a few examples of cheap flights I’ve had:  $450 from Denver to India with 1 stop.  $400 to Beijing from Denver 1 stop.  $700 to Prague from Denver and returning from Romania.  $200 from Denver to Belize City.  $850 to Buenos Aires from Denver.  $800 from Denver to New Zealand.  

There are great deals out there!  Go find them!

PS:  I don’t get any kickback from any of these sites.  This is really how I search for flights.  It takes a lot of time but it pays off.