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There are some great ways to save on plane tickets, if you do some research and planning you can have the trip of a lifetime cheaper than you could fill up your gas tank.
Here are my favorite ways to save on plane tickets:
1. Compare Prices
My favorite site for comparing flight prices is Google Flights. You can select multiple cities as options you are willing to fly from/to and see most of the worlds airlines all on the same page. Click the + to keep adding more airports!
You’ll be surprised by smaller airports. In South Carolina for example flights from Charleston can be half the price of flights from Charlotte (a much larger airport).
2. Know When to Buy & Search Secretly
Admittedly, this window is always changing and it’s more of just a good guess. The solid number various folks tracking tickets has come up with was 47 days in advance is the best time to book your airline tickets. More broadly: one to four months out is the booking window you should be aiming for.
If you are just trying to get an idea of what prices are and are not ready to book yet, PLEASE search for your tickets with an incognito or private browsing window. This hides you and doesn’t allow cookies to track your search history. The more you search a flight the more the ticket price will jump. I promise.
3. Have Flexible Travel Dates
The least desirable days to fly are Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Saturdays. Usually people fly on Fridays and Sundays to make the most of their vacation days or to revolve around their work week. If you have a flexible schedule at all, try to fly out on Tuesday, Wednesday or Saturday – even if it’s only once instead of both ways. This will definitely save you some money.
Tip: If you have really flexible dates, use the calendar search tools on Google Flights to see the cheapest days a month at a time.
5. Check for Different Airports
You should always be in the habit of clicking the little box that says search surrounding airports. That’s a happy little box that will end up saving you a ton. Airlines might be running promotions on a new connection or there may be regional airlines that fly to smaller cities that you don’t normally think of.
For example we got $99 round trip tickets flying from Charleston SC to Providence Rhode Island. This is about 50 minutes outside of Boston. You can take a train straight from Boston or rent a car, but you won’t find tickets that cheap into Boston directly.
6. Always Use a Airline Credit Card
As long as you are smart and pay off your card at the end of the month, having the credit card for the airline you are going to fly with will save a chunk! Almost every airline offers FREE checked bags when you pay with their credit card. You’ll also get fun perks like boarding early and discounts on any in-flight purchases (included wi-fi). I only use the card to buy the airline ticket and may go months between using it, but being able to check a bag saves you an easy $50+ on each leg of your trip!
Tip: Most credit cards also offer trip protection on airline tickets, so check with your card before ever paying for trip insurance.
7. Book Directly Through the Airline
You should use the 3rd party sites to research prices, but when you decide to finally book a ticket head straight to the airline you want to fly to book. This won’t save you money, but can end up earning extra travel perks and it will definitely pay off if you have trouble with your flight plans. According to a friend and airline employee at a local airport, many airlines will not prioritize refunds and re-bookings for 3rd party tickets as they want to help loyal customers first.
8. Enjoy a LONG Layover
This is a two part tip…
First, many domestic flights are cheaper when they have a layover because the demand for non-stop flights is higher and they can charge more for them. While it delays your trip a tad, it could save a lot depending on the flight you pick.
Second, if you are traveling internationally you can have a layover up to 24 hours on the same ticket without paying extra. Maximize your layover and enjoy a quick visit to another city (or two if you pick a different route home). There are also some airlines that offer extended layovers (really called stopovers) free of charge if you are stopping in certain cities:
Finnair: Fly through Helsinki and get an unlimited length stopover.
Icelandair: Enjoy up to seven nights for free with a stopover in Reykjavík, Iceland.
KLM & Flying Blue: Stopover in Amsterdam or Paris for up to 24 hours on your way out and returning, for free!
Japan Airlines: Offer free stopovers to various cities depending on your final destination.
Hawaiian Airlines: If you’re flying from any of the airline’s international destinations, you are eligible for a free layover on each leg of your trip in Honolulu with no limit on how long you can stay. For US flights you’ll only pay $60 more for an unlimited stopover.
9. Earn Airline Points Like a Pro
Airline points are really your ticket to cheaper travel. Like I mention in #6, you should have an airlines credit card, and when you sign up for one you should look for the best sign up bonus you can find! United offers 50,000 points on a regular basis and American will over 40,000-60,000. Both of those are enough for some international tickets!
The airlines credit card is not want you want to mostly use though. Ideally having a credit card that lets you earn points that work in many places in best. My two favorite would be the Chase Sapphire or the Amex Gold Card. Both brands offer cards that can be used across many airlines and hotels and the points convert at a great ratio to most airlines. Here’s a chart of what card points transfer to airlines. You will see the option to transfer points directly to the airline you want to travel with. Find the ticket you want through the airline, then transfer the points over straight to the airline and book the trip!
Want a site to find great deals on flights with points? Check out Seats.Aero this is how we’ve planned all our trips this year. You can use it for free, but if you have a number of trips it is worth it to sign up.
Be careful of your credit and don’t sign up for a ton of cards at the same time. If you grabbed one card to your regular airline and then 6 months or so later got a generic card like Chase, that would get you two international tickets for free in the same calendar year!
10. When Using Rewards – Always Book Open Jaw Tickets
If you don’t know what open-jaw tickets are, they’re simply roundtrip tickets where you depart from a different airport from the one you first initially landed at. So you fly from New York to London and then fly home from Paris to New York. With awards tickets airlines consider areas in zones, so as long as your two cities (the one you arrive into and the one you eventually depart from) are in the same zone, they will let you count this as one ticket and one regular reward ticket.
Tip: You can also book these as regular tickets too and it’s typically cheaper than booking two one way tickets. Tryout the Matrix ITA for the best options (this is the backend system that google runs for almost all of the airlines in the world).
My husband and I did this in 2019 when we traveled to Scotland. We flew into Edinburgh and flew out of Glasgow. We could have traveled more of the UK and picked a different airport a bit farther away, but this was perfect to make a loop of the country and not retrace any steps.
11. Flexibility is Key: Time & Location
Planning a budget vacation isn’t about specific dates… get rid of that idea in your head. Instead spend some time just searching flights and see what you find. People will always say “I want to fly to London on October 6th” No! The minute you start planning a vacation with a preset date in mind the more you will pay for the vacation.
Use the Kayak.com explore tool to play around. Put in where you want to leave from and scroll around the map to see just where you can go! I actually like to do this backwards if I really have a place in mind I want to go. Put in that you are leaving from London and then use the map to see what airport you can fly home to the cheapest! This will help you get ideas of flights and airports to search for cheaper deals.
We found that JFK for example has by far the cheapest flights from the US to London. Some as low as 6,000 points if you are booking on points (see the image above) or $200 one way cash. If I try to search that from an airport near me the price is 5X that price. The solution: book two tickets! Book a ticket from home to JFK (usually around $89) and then the ticket to London. This saves hundreds of dollars! You will need to be smart and not check a bag or have a longer layover so you can go to baggage claim and then recheck it on the next airline, but the massive amount you paid it’s totally worth it.
