When it comes to traveling, often flights are one of the biggest expenses. Just because flights can be expensive doesn’t mean you can’t travel by plane! In today’s post, I’m going to give you 4 tips for getting the best deals on flights.
1. Use Google Flights
Google Flights should always be your first go-to when planning a trip. It is great because it helps you see when the best deal for your flight is going to be. You type in your departure city and your destination city then select your dates.
The calendar feature is great because, if your dates are flexible, it shows you when the cheapest days for tickets are. They have a new feature recently that allows you to turn on tracking for a specific flight. Google will then notify you if the flight price drops.
Just a note about Google Flights though, they don’t search every arrline. For example, they don’t search SouthWest. So I usually do a separate search on SouthWest and compare it to my Google Flights results. Some smaller and regional airlines don’t show up as well.
2. Use Hopper
In addition to using Google Flights, I will set an alert up in Hopper. Hopper is an app (the icon is pink with a white rabbit) that also searches airfares for the lowest price. Similar to Google Flights, they don’t always search every airline (including SouthWest) and they don’t always have the same deals as Google Flights does. But I still like to use it, especially when I’m looking at flights farther out. I set up a reminder and then wait for an alert to come saying that tickets are low. Then I go and check Google Flights to confirm Hopper’s findings. Hopper also has predictive tool that tells you if they expect ticket prices to go up or down and if you should buy now or wait for a certain number of days.
3. Be Flexible
If you can, being flexible can have major savings associated with ti. IT is cheaper to fly during the middle of the week than the weekends. Shoulder and off seasons are cheaper to travel than high and busy seasons.
4. Look for One-Way Fares
Sometimes, not always but sometimes, it may be worth it to look into one-way fares. Sometimes you can get great deals going to your destination on one airline and coming back on another. I like to use Google Flights to help with this tip as well. The biggest time we have had the most success with this is when we travel to Europe. The last two summers we have taken 3 week trips to Europe. Because we were gone for so long and sometimes hopped around the continent, it was cheaper for us to fly on separate airlines with 2 one-way tickets than a round trip ticket.
**Bonus Tip**
This bonus tip is only for a specific set of people, but it might still be helpful to you! If you live out west, specifically in Utah (or you can get to the Salt Lake City airport easily), follow Flights From Home on Instagram.(While you’re there make sure to follow us as well 🙂  They post great deals on flights from Salt Lake and sometimes from other near airports like Las Vegas, LAX and Denver. We used the tips posted on this account to score AMAZING tickets to Boston at the end of the summer for an anniversary trip.
There are probably other Instagram accounts out there that post deals based on your location. I just know about this one since we are based out of Utah. If you know of a great travel deal account to follow leave them in the comments below!
