The Traveller's Magazine
It’s not always easy to find the cheapest flights in a jungle of internet sites, airlines, tour operators and agencies. Don’t take your chances, just follow these easy tips for weeding out the offers to find the best trips for the best prices.
When is the best time to book flight tickets?
This of course is the mother of all questions… and in reality, there isn’t really a straight answer. It’s not like mixing yellow and blue and getting green but there are some tendencies when it comes to finding good prices on flights. Generally speaking, it’s a good idea to book flights at least 3 months in advance, depending on the destination.
- 3 months for short-haul flights (low cost airlines only release their seats for sale 5 months in advance)
- 5-6 months for medium-haul flights
- 8 months for long-haul flights
Use a good flight compare website
Everyone to their own but would we miss the opportunity to toot our own horn on this point? No. Way.
Keep in mind that not all flight compare websites work the same and while one site may offer the cheapest price according to Google, that may not be the whole story. Use a site that shows prices that are all-inclusive and searches low cost airlines too. It can pay to be loyal (if we’re talking about rewards) and when you’re scoping out travel sites to use, keep these things in mind:
- Does the compare site index low cost airlines? If you don’t mind giving up some leg-room, this will be a key factor for finding the cheapest priced tickets.
- Is the website independent from airlines and other sites? If this is not the case and if the site is sponsored by other travel companies it is difficult to trust the transparency of the offers being presented to the user.
Use the tools available to you
liligo.com for example is more than just a search engine. We have plenty of other tools to making finding the best and cheapest flights easier for you.
- Flight alerts: receive price updates via email for a particular flight route. This is great if you don’t want to relaunch the same search each and every day to see if the price has changed.
- Flight map: fill in a few criteria (travel dates, departure airport, maximum budget, that sort of thing) and we’ll show you where you can go on a map with corresponding offers.
- Possibility to combine low cost airline offers, because one may be cheaper heading out than another coming in.
- Searching with flexible dates will always increase your chances of finding a cheaper flight.
- Use mobile apps. They’re the easiest way to search while on the go, great for when you have to know NOW how much it costs to fly to Barcelona next weekend. Check out liligo for iPhone, iPad and Android.
Have any more tricks to add to our list? Share them below!
Finding the flights and it’s cost is very easy to the people. Today by using the internet we can know each and everything, which you want. Few days i went to outing with my family i chosen http://www.123cheaptravel.co.uk/Flights-to-India.html here i got cheap flights.
Definitely helpful ideas! Thanks for sharing.
Someone might also find http://anyonecantravel.com/ pretty helpful, so I figured I’d pass that along.