8 Ways to Save the Most Money on Air Travel

Me: Travels the world
Friend: “I’m so jealous! I wish I could do that!”
Me: “Why don’t you?”
Friend: “I don’t have the money!”
Me: Looks in nearly empty bank account, hops plane to South America

There’s a huge myth out there that travel is expensive. And honestly, that’s how the airline companies probably like it! If you don’t know the strategies to save money on tickets, you’ll just pay for whatever price they publish the first day you start looking for flights. Now, obviously, travel isn’t ALWAYS cheap either, and you have to make smart choices depending on your financial situation, but with the tricks I’ll lay out below, you’ll be able to save hundreds on that next big air travel purchase. Cheap flights coming your way! DISCLAIMER: We’re only going to focus on flights for which you’re paying cash. Paying with points and miles can make travel even cheaper, but we’ll cover that in other posts!

So let’s get to it!

(If you just want to search for cheap flights, click HERE)

1. Have Flexible Travel Dates

The best way to find the cheapest flights is to be as flexible as possible on when you travel. The difference in price for the exact same flight can vary by hundreds of dollars from week to week, or even day to day. Hell, sometimes it’s hour to hour. If you freelance, this part is easy. If you’ve got two weeks vacation, it probably means being flexible with when you take that vacation time. Many booking sites allow you to select “flexible travel dates” when searching for flights, and some even let you look at a monthly breakdown of costs! These charts are invaluable in deciding when to fly.

Avoid traveling on really popular dates – like around Thanksgiving and Christmas, or at the beginning and end of Summer. Additionally, consider traveling to certain destinations during their offseason or shoulder season. For places like Iceland that means during the Winter. If you’re traveling to the Southern Hemisphere to soak up some sun, you can get some very cheap flights January since it’s not a popular travel time for those in the Northern Hemisphere. Thinking strategically like this can make a huge difference!

2. Be Flexible on Destinations

Just like with dates, not letting your heart get stuck on one destination can really pay dividends!

When we travel, we generally don’t decide where we’re going until we find a great deal. When we went to Africa for the first time, I shot James a message asking “Hey man, you wanna go to Rwanda?” because I’d seen a deal for $600 flights roundtrip from New York. He said yes and off we went! Same with Chile and Senegal. Sure, we’ve got bucket-list places we’d love to visit, but the way I see it we’ve got a whole life to tick off those checkboxes, and the right deal will come along eventually!

3. Be Ready to POUNCE!

So you’re flexible with dates, flexible with your destination, and you’ve found INSANELY cheap flights! The next thing you have to be is READY to pull that trigger. Flight prices change rapidly. Sometimes within hours or minutes. If you see a deal for a place you want to go for a price you’re willing to pay, you’ve got to be ready and able to act fast, or it could be gone. The good news here is that with all major US airlines, there is a 24-hour free cancellation period. Read that again. You’ve got 24 hours to cancel the ticket, no questions asked, which means you have a pretty fun opportunity to BOOK FIRST, research second, and then make a final determination. I’ve done this a number of times, and I’ve never regretted it. I’ve only regretted the deals I didn’t pull the trigger on that I’ve never seen again (like $370 round-trip to Singapore!).

That said, if the flight you’re looking at is an international carrier, just check their respective policies before assuming you’ll have 24 hours to cancel.

4. Find Cheap Flight Deals

So, how do you find those insane, random deals in the first place? By following flight deal sites and social media pages! Let other people do the hard work of scouring the internet for deals – ain’t nobody got time for that.

Here are some of my favorite sites for finding cheap flights:

Skyscanner is ALWAYS my first site to check for good prices if I have specific dates on which I need to fly. They almost always have the absolute lowest price available. Click above to search for flights!

If I DON’T have specific dates in mind, these are the sites I check out:

• Secret Flying – My go-to. Super easy and straightforward!
• The Flight Deal – A little more complicated to use, but has some great deals
• Travel Pirates – Great for deals on travel packages including flights and hotels
• Hopper – Once you know *where* you want to go, the Hopper app will tell you the best time to book those flights to get the best price

Pro Tip: Like the above pages on Facebook, go to their page, and change your newsfeed setting to “see first” so you’ll always get updates on the day’s cheap deals when you log on.

5. EXPLORE!

Have some time to kill? Bored at work? One of my favorite things to do is go to Kayak.com/explore or Google Flights, plug in my home airport and see where I can get for how much. Both sites let you control a bunch of different criteria and will show you all the lowest prices for flights from that particular airport. You can choose specific dates, or pick things like “one week trip in November”, as an example. The options are endless! Play around long enough and you’ll snag some great deals.

6. Fly on Weekdays and Holidays

Weekdays: This one’s self-explanatory. It’s just cheaper to fly during the week than on the weekends. Usually. As with everything, there are no hard and fast rules, and there will always be exceptions. But when you’re searching for low prices, weekdays are a good place to start.

Holidays: Now, when we say to fly on holidays, we mean *on the actual day* – not the days before or after, when travel prices skyrocket. James and I actually spent New Years Eve 2018 40,000 feet in the air, en route to Kigali, Rwanda. Sounds kind of lame, right? But let’s be serious, New Years Eves is BAR-NONE the most underwhelming holiday of them all, and secretly everyone knows it.

I’d pick saving a couple hundred bucks on a flight to Africa over another disappointing ball drop, wouldn’t you? That’s what I thought.

7. “Budget” Doesn’t Mean Cheap

Here’s what happens: You put in your dates, choose your location, and beep boop boop these SUPER cheap flights pop up! Fly Frontier or Spirit for $50 LESS than all the others!? What luck! You zoom through the checkout process, pop a beer, and celebrate your upcoming adventure. Then you get to the airport and realize that every. single. thing. costs money. Checked bags, carryon bags, use of the overhead bins, seat selection. Hell, even sodas cost $2.99. All told, if you’re flying with bags, these budget airlines are often NOT cheaper than paying more upfront, so it’s always important to look at the websites and fees to make sure you’re not getting bamboozled. They may seem like cheap flights on the Google machine, but consider this your warning.

THAT SAID! If you ARE traveling light, then these no-frills airlines can be a great option. Just make sure and do the math. This brings us to our last tip:

8. Don’t Pay Checked Bag Fees!

Unless you’re traveling on Southwest (no bag fees!), checked bags can be as much as $35 each way, and $70 per trip. Suddenly your $230 ticket just turned into $300 in a snap. If you’re trying to travel as affordably as we do, every little bit you can save makes a huge difference.

The best way to avoid bag fees is simply to MINIMIZE! Over time I’ve realized that I just don’t need as much stuff with me as I think I do. In another post, we’ll break down what I pack on a typical trip, but these days if I’m not camping and don’t need a lot of gear, I can get everything I need for extended travel down to a carry-on bag and a backpack.

Your other, better option is……….. TO FLY INTERNATIONAL! Hey, you want to see the world, don’t you? Turns out, the vast majority of international flights come with free bags – usually two per person. Clearly, this is the route you’re gonna want to take as often as possible if minimalism just isn’t for you.

So there you have it: our eight best tricks for finding cheap flights. Anything we missed? What’s worked for you in the past? Comment below

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