Sometimes, your dreams of the perfect getaway are slashed by outrageously expensive airfare. Your flight will comprise a bulk, if not the biggest bulk, of your travel budget, especially if your destination is halfway across the globe. The good news is that in this age of cheap travel and budget carriers challenging major airline players, it is possible to score fantastic flight ticket deals. The key is to keep your eyes peeled for updates on special promotions. But where can you find these price slashes and cheap airfares? Read on for tips on hunting for these and clues on the best website to purchase plane tickets.
Tips For Buying Cheap Plane Tickets Online
Here are few tips on scoring cheap plane tickets online.
1. Be open to travel on any date.
Many sought-after destinations have peak seasons, attracting the greatest number of tourists and, thus, a spike in airfare. Thus, to score cheap flights, try scheduling your travels on dates other than the usual holidays, like Christmas, New Year’s Eve, or Thanksgiving. Take note of peak seasons in your country of choice and avoid these dates. August, for example, is the high season in Europe, and everyone travels around to make the most of the sunny weather.
If you want to book cheaper flights to Europe, travel during the spring or fall. This is when the mad rush to travel subsides, but the sights are still spectacular.
2. Be open to travel anywhere.
Just like our first tip, try places that are off the beaten path but are surely worth visiting as well. If you scroll through social media for leisure, then perhaps you can also make it a habit to browse through the best websites to purchase your plane tickets. These websites also clue you in on hidden gems that you may have overlooked but would be a great travel experience as well.
3. Be open to explore different routes to your destination.
Taking direct flights to your destination may not always be the cheaper option. You can explore different route permutations, if you will, and compare prices. Possibly, you can spend much less if you fly to a major airport, and from that airport, take a budget plane to your desired destination.
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Sites where you can purchase your plane tickets
Other than direct airline websites, here are some of the best websites to purchase plane tickets.
1. Skyscanner
Skyscanner is one of the most popular websites for comparing airfares. It literally ‘scans the skies’ for flights so that travelers can choose the lowest fares possible. It has a search ‘Everywhere’ option that brings back to you travel destinations filtered as the best options in terms of price and duration of travel. Our tip number 2, to be open to travel anywhere, is best applied in this option of Skyscanner.
What’s good about Skyscanner is how it helps visitors to ascertain the reliability of flight booking sites by displaying their user star ratings. But the best thing about Skyscanner is how ‘woke’ it is. As it fully understands the environmental impact of traveling far and wide, Skyscanner allows users to choose the ‘Greener flights’ option, which filters flights to only show routes and itineraries that have the lowest carbon footprint. Also, to promote this necessary consciousness even in unfiltered searches, Skyscanner indicates whether a flight route or itinerary is a ‘greener choice.’
2. Expedia
Expedia is another popular website to bookmark for cheap flights. But more than just booking plane tickets, Expedia bundles your flights with hotel bookings at your destination so you can get the best value for money. This is worth trying, but with a caveat that you also do your research to see if the bundles are indeed cheaper than booking ‘a la carte’, especially on specific dates.
A feature that helps you score low flight deals on Expedia is the ‘Show flexible dates’ option. This is where you can best apply our tip number 1, to be flexible with your travel dates, because moving your trip up and down the calendar may make you spend less and save much. Expedia flight bookings also show you transparently what you availed of includes, and what it doesn’t, like seat selection, meals, baggage allowance, etc. Transparency appears to be Expedia’s philosophy, and that is one of the website’s best features.
3. TripAdvisor Flights
TripAdvisor’s popularity heightened when it gave travelers a venue to write their own reviews of destinations, activities, hotel accommodations, and other aspects of travel. On the website, you can also search for airfare, but it does not guarantee flights with the lowest price. However, what TripAdvisor does is to allow you to conveniently check results from other flight booking sites so you can easily make a comparison without having to do another search. The best thing about TripAdvisor is that its content is mainly driven by users’ reviews and not significantly by paid endorsements. For example, when a TripAdvisor flight search result comes up, you do not only see the price, but you also see a ‘FlyScores’ rating based on user reviews.
4. Google Flights
Google Flights is an efficient metasearch site and is simple to navigate because it is streamlined and free from the clutter of ads. To view dates and flights, you have an option to view its Date Grid to compare flight prices plotted on a calendar. You can also use the other view option, a Price Graph, which charts the lowest-priced flights in a bar graph. Aside from its seamless and user-friendly design that gives you what you need to see at a glance, Google Flights shows you flights and fares across a region or continent.
Conclusion
Dreaming big about your travel destination shouldn’t be intimidating since you have all these tips and tools available to work for you. Booking flights on your own could be a hit or miss, so knowing the best website to purchase plane tickets is half the job done. The next step is to keep tabs on their newsletters and countless notifications where they dish out information and promos that you can avail of. Another tip to get the best deals is not just to focus on one website but to check all and maximize each site’s best features. For example, you may use Skyscanner if you’re still exploring which travel destination to go to on the cheap, head to Expedia for flight and hotel bundles, TripAdvisor for user reviews, and Google Flights for the big picture. Bon, voyage!
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