Tips for finding cheap flights

By far the most common question I get asked about travel is how to find cheap flights. The truth is… it can be difficult. Sometimes you just can’t. But there some tips that can help, and sometimes these tips will help you find AMAZING deals! I’ve rounded up all of my best advice below for finding cheap airfare, so read on to learn more 

Be Flexible
The number one way to find the best deals possible on flights is to keep your dates and destinations flexible. I know this is not always possible for everyone, but if you can fly when and where the cheapest flights are, it can be a no-brainer! In fact, one of the best deals I ever found was when I wasn’t even looking for a trip.

About 7 years ago, I came across roundtrip airfare from Minneapolis to Paris for $289. I couldn’t resist such a great deal, so I took an unexpected 5-night mother-daughter trip with my oldest daughter, and it a wonderful experience where we made awesome memories together. Now that she’s an adult and off living on her own, I treasure this experience more than I ever even realized I would, and I’m so glad I took advantage of this cheap airfare deal!

Another great deal I found was when all of my girls were younger – I didn’t have a large travel budget, but I really wanted a little getaway with them, and I wanted them to experience the excitement of flying on a plane and going to a new place. I didn’t really care where we went or when. I saw that Frontier airlines was having a sale where they were advertising $19 one-way fares, so I decided to see what was available.

I found round trip tickets from MSP to ATL in early October for $38 per person, and I booked them! My girls were ages 11, 9 and 4 at the time and my mom went with us, so I got FIVE round-trip tickets for $190 total. We each just brought a backpack and put it under the seat in front of us as our personal item so we didn’t have to pay for luggage, but I did pay for seats to ensure we could all sit together. I found a cheap but nice hotel on TripAdvisor, and we had a really fun long weekend!

One of the best parts about this trip? I kept it a surprise – I didn’t tell any of the girls we were going until the morning we left! When they woke up for school, I told them that instead of going to school that day, we were getting on a plane to Atlanta for the weekend! They were in shock and really couldn’t believe it. I have a fun video of when I told them, and my 4-year-old was very worried that her teacher said she couldn’t miss school. Great memories! But anyway… on to helping YOU find great airfare like this!

The point is, if you are open to traveling anywhere at any time, the sky really is the limit!!

But if you have a few more restrictions than “anywhere, anytime” – as most of us do – don’t fear! There are still some helpful hints for finding the best airfare possible that fits what you need. And even if you can adjust your travel dates by just one or two days on either end, you can often find better airfare than you might have expected.

Now on to more tips!

Check Daily
Try to look for flight deals for 5-10 minutes every day.  Prices are constantly changing and you are bound to come across some great deals if you’re checking regularly! Plus, if you are checking regularly, you are more likely to recognize a good (or great!) deal when you see one. I like to check Google Flights regularly, and also my favorite airlines from my home airport, which are Southwest, Sun Country, and Frontier.

Subscribe
Subscribe to email newsletters for your all of preferred airlines, and watch for sales. You never know when something will pop up unexpectedly that will be a perfect fit. Make sure you include budget airlines such as Frontier and Allegiant – they can save you a ton of money in certain situations!

Also try looking up lesser-known airlines that fly out of your home airport and subscribe to their email newsletters as well. The $289 flight to Paris that I mentioned above was on Icelandair, which I had never even heard of until I saw this sale and booked the tickets!

Use Online Tools
Take advantage of the wonderful tools that are available to you now, such as Google Flights, Kayak Explore, and Skyscanner. Google Flights is my favorite tool for starting out my flight search and it has quite a few neat little features that many people don’t know about. Look for a Google Flights tutorial coming soon to show you all of these features! For now, if you want to learn more, hop on over to The Points Guy’s guide to using Google Flights.

One thing I really love about Google flights is that you can set a price alert for your desired destinations and then you will get an email notification when the price drops lower than usual. Our family would like to go to Hawaii sometime soon, so I have set up a price alert for Hawaii and I get regular emails about cheap(er) flights to Hawaii at various times of the year. I now have a really good feel for how much flights to Hawaii generally cost from our home airport, and how much tickets will cost us for a family of five if I find a good deal. This tool really is a huge timesaver!

Points & Miles
Take full advantage of points and miles – I promise it’s not as overwhelming as it may seem, and this is the way you are truly going to take your travel game to the next level! Look for more information coming soon on this topic, but to learn more now, I also recommend checking out The Points Guy, Just Get Out of Town (JGOOT), Thrifty Traveler, or 10X Travel.

As a quick summary, you can earn points and miles in many different ways, and use them for free hotel stays or flights (plus taxes and fees). If you are doing quite a bit of traveling, it is a good idea to pick your favorite top 1 or 2 hotel brands and try to always stay at those properties so that you can maximize your points. Some good hotel loyalty programs are Wyndham Rewards, Choice Privileges, Marriott Bonvoy, World of Hyatt, and IHG One Rewards.

Aside from just staying at hotels, the other main way to earn points or miles is through credit cards (but remember, getting credit cards is serious business – you should never go into debt just to earn points, and you should never spend more on credit cards than you can afford to pay off). The way points and miles work with credit cards is that certain cards offer sign-up bonuses – sometimes very large bonuses! – and other perks for getting and using their cards.

The Venture X Rewards Card by Capital One, for example, is one of the best and most widely used travel cards. As a sign-up bonus, if you get the card and spend $4000 within the first 3 months of opening the account, (with the current promotion) you would automatically earn 75,000 airline miles, which is typically worth a minimum of $750 in airfare.

This card does come with a $395 annual fee and usually a pretty high interest rate. But in return you get 10,000 bonus miles every year on the anniversary of the date you opened the account, a $300 annual travel credit, and a $100 Global Entry or TSA PreCheck credit. So if you’re able to pay the card off every month, it can be a great way to earn free travel!

There is a lot more to mastering the points and miles game, such as stacking rewards, knowing which loyalty programs are best, figuring out which travel cards are best for you, choosing what website you should use to book your travel, and so much more. It can actually be a lot of fun!

Book Quickly
If you see a super cheap fare for a flight with a departure date at least 7 days in the future, grab it quick! Per the U.S. Department of Transportation, airlines are required to give you 24 hours to cancel at no penalty if you change your mind, and sometimes these super cheap fares don’t last long.

“This notice provides guidance to U.S. and foreign air carriers regarding compliance with the customer service rule that requires carriers to hold a reservation at the quoted fare for 24 hours without payment or allow a reservation to be cancelled within 24 hours without penalty. The 24-hour reservation requirement is mandated by the Department of Transportation’s consumer rule “Enhancing Airline Passenger Protections” and applies to all reservations made seven days or more prior to the flight’s scheduled departure time.”

Positioning Flight
If you are travelling internationally (or even if you’re not), you may want to consider how a positioning flight could help save you money. What is a positioning flight? It’s typically a shorter flight that you take to get to a major airport hub, which is where the really cheap flight deals are typically found. This is especially helpful if you don’t live within driving distance of a major hub such as L.A., New York, Miami, etc.

For example, let’s say you live in Des Moines and you and a friend want to go to Paris. After looking at airfare, the cheapest flight you can find is $965 round trip. However, you see an airline that has a sale on airfare from New York to Paris during your preferred dates for $510 round trip – a savings of $455 per person or $910 total if you were flying from New York!  That sounds like great savings to you, so you then check flights from Des Moines to New York and find a flight for $219 round trip per person on a different airline.

Even with paying for this “positioning flight,” you would still save a total of $472 by just planning a little differently. It is recommended to allow at least 3 hours between a positioning flight and the next flight, so you may spend a little longer on travel (or maybe not, depending on what was available from your home airport). Also, there is some slight risk involved because you will be buying two different tickets on two different airlines, so if you are significantly delayed on one flight the other airline won’t automatically know and may not be flexible with the second reservation.

Only you can decide if a positioning flight is right for your travel plans, but in the right circumstances, they can definitely save a lot of money, so it’s worth considering!

Let Vacation Girl Travel Help
Like, follow, and check the Vacation Girl Travel Facebook page regularly – we post great deals there whenever we find them. We also post travel alerts, news stories, destination ideas, travel hacks, and an occasional corny dad joke related to travel – so you’ll find great information, cheap travel deals, and some laughs, all in one place! What more could you ask for??