When it comes to traveling, I am always on a budget. The cheaper I can find my flight, the longer I can travel, spend my money on other things during the trip, or potentially go on more trips.
There are so many apps and services, like Next Vacay, that you can either use for free or pay for that “help you find the best deals”, but I honestly don’t think any of them work as well as looking for flights yourself. It may be more work to find and track flights, but it’s worth saving potentially hundreds of dollars on flights!
I’ve used the app Hopper, and I honestly was not the biggest fan. I know it is popular, but I found that the search was a bit complicated and the only thing I liked was the alerts when your flights dropped in price. Booking through third-party sites like Trip Advisor or Kayak isn’t my favorite either because you’re not directly booking with the airline and can get hit with fees.
So, what do I use to search for flights? Just Google Flights. www.google.com/flights. This is the EASIEST way to find the best and cheapest flights.
I’m going to use my trip to Tampa in January as an example. And check out the video I made that goes along with this blog:
Step 1: Establish a Trip Time Frame, Destination, and Budget
The first thing you have to do is establish when you want to take your trip, where you’re departing from, and what your destination is. Being flexible with your trip dates is the best way to find a cheap flight. I will usually find about a 2-week time frame that I am looking to go on a trip, not that the trip is the entire 2 weeks, and then go from there.
“Being flexible with your trip dates is the best way to find a cheap flight. I will usually find about a 2 week time frame that I am looking to go on a trip, not that the trip is the entire 2 weeks, and then go from there. ”
Once you have your time frame, then you can input your departure and destination. This is one of my favorite parts about Google Flights. You can input multiple departures and destinations and it will calculate all of the possibilities for you. With services like Next Vacay, they don’t calculate all of the possible airports in your area. It kept giving me flights from NYC which is a 6-hour drive compared to a 3-hour drive to Toronto as the next biggest airport to me.
With my flight to Tampa, I can show you that I put in Buffalo and Rochester as my departing airports and Tampa as a destination, not a specific airport. This way it will search all of the airports around Tampa and match the flights from Buffalo and Rochester’s airport. I’ve also picked a two-week time frame that I would like to travel in.
Once you have an idea of average prices from your departing location to your destination, you can decide your budget for the trip. Google Flights will also give you a meter to tell you if the flight is in the low price range, average, or high. For me, my round trip budget for this flight was $150.
Now we can move on to find the best flights.
Step 2: Assess Which Flights and Dates Are Best
Once you establish when and where you’re going, you can search the flights.
This is about finding the cheapest flights. The cheapest flights aren’t always the greatest flights, and it depends on how you like to travel. Depending on my destination, I like to look for direct flights. I get really bad anxiety when flying, so not having to switch flights helps me a lot with dealing with my flight anxiety. Also, when I’m traveling alone, direct flights help because I don’t have to wander around unfamiliar airports alone. I don’t mind paying extra for a direct flight if it means I have more peace of mind, but sometimes flying direct can be cheaper.
With Google Flights you can choose how many stops you would prefer or what time you prefer to leave. There are so many ways to narrow down flights, but as you do that, and get more specific, you risk not finding the best-priced flights.
I usually start with no filters or just the “non-stop” filter. And then look at the “Date Grid” View to find the best-priced flight.
So now is when you have to make decisions about what date you want to fly. I chose to track the flights from Jan 3rd to Jan 8th and the flight from Jan 3rd to Jan 10th both for $129 round trip. These were the dates that worked best for my schedule, even though they aren’t necessarily the cheapest. This date grid picture was also taken after I already booked, so some of the prices changed since then.
Both flights that I chose to track are through Frontier, which is a budget airline, and they are both non-stop flights. The other cheaper flights are days that didn’t really work best for me, are at times of the day that were inconvenient, or they had layovers. They’re both from Buffalo to Tampa which is perfect for me. It’s almost always cheaper to fly out of Buffalo instead of Rochester and to just give a friend some gas money to drop you off and pick you up.
Now that I’ve selected my flights, you can choose to track a flight by selecting your flights and hitting “Track Flight”.
It should be noted that when flying with Frontier, carry on baggage isn’t included in your ticket price. It’s around $40 to purchase your carry on 1 way so you’re looking at an extra $80. Depending on where you’re flying to, it’s usually still cheaper to purchase a carry-on and get a super cheap flight than to book with another airline and have your carry on included.
Last time I flew to Tampa, I went through American Airlines. It was not a direct flight and had the shortest layover of 40 minutes (aka high anxiety for me), and I paid about $200 total round trip. With Frontier, I am getting a direct flight round trip for $119 (what I ended up paying for the flight), and if I chose to buy carry on baggage it would have been an additional $80, still making my total $200. These are the give and take decisions you have to make when looking for the cheapest flights. In this case, for the short trip, I opted out of paying for a carry on bag and just brought a book bag as a personal item.
When tracking a flight, pay attention to the airline and what they offer with your ticket. Especially for international flights. Some airlines will include everything including carry on baggage, seat selection, and complimentary meals and booze. If that’s the service you want, then you’re going to pay more for the flight flight. With that being said, it is still possible to find a great deal on a great airline it all just depends on the trip and the circumstances.
Step 3: Track Your Flights
Now that you’ve found the possible flights, you can go to your tracked flights page and see how the price has changed over time.
Here’s where to find them:
Here’s what your page will look like:
You can just click the down arrow next to the price history to see the graph of the flight's price history. Since I ended up booking this flight only about a week or so after I tracked it, the tracking history wasn’t so interesting. Instead, I’m going to use another flight I’m tracking as an example. This flight is an international flight through a really nice airline, Virgin Atlantic. You’ll see how the visual of the graph gives you an idea of how the price has changed.
This is a round trip flight to London that I found for $345 roundtrip. That’s actually a great price for a great airline, and my flight budget for this potential trip was $400. I didn’t book it when it was low and it has now gone up to $645. This makes the flight way out of budget and looking at the trend, I don’t believe it will go back down within budget again. I’m actually hoping to do a different trip, so this flight is no longer relevant to my plans anymore, but I was still tracking it for the purpose of this blog.
This is a great way to see the patterns of the flight prices and eventually you get an idea of how far out you should book your trip. For an international flight, to get the best deal, people recommend booking 6 months in advance, but that isn’t a hard set rule. We booked our flight to Iceland only 2 months in advance and still found a great price!
Step 4: Book Directly Through the Airline
Now once you’ve tracked your flight and are happy with the price of the flight, you just have to book it! Sometimes I’m tracking a flight for months, sometimes I’m tracking a flight for a couple days or weeks, it really depends on the trip.
When you go to book your flight you just have to click “Booking Options”. This is what will pop up when you do that:
Here you can choose which airline you want to book through and you also get to see what baggage is or is not included in your ticket. Some international flights will be operated by multiple airlines while domestic flights are usually operated by one.
Flight prices vary way more than most people realize. The sooner you are planning your trip the most likely you are to find a great deal. For domestic flights, I usually budget between $150-$250 round trip and for international flights, depending on how far, I budget about $400-$800. There are obviously some places where a flight would cost more as if we flew to the other side of the planet to Australia or New Zealand.
When planning a trip, a plane ticket is usually your largest expense! Put in the extra work to find a great flight in order to be able to afford a trip or have a bigger budget for other things on your trip!
If you really want to travel, it is do-able on a small budget! There may be some small sacrifices like not being able to pick your seats or paying for your bag, but the flight isn’t what matters on a trip, the experience when you arrive at your destination is! Don’t be discouraged from traveling because you’ve been told that flying is expensive. It’s possible to afford a trip if you’re willing to be flexible and put in the work to do it!