Airfare and accommodations are probably the biggest expenses when planning a vacation. The number one advice given by frequent travelers is to travel during off-season. I follow this advice and usually avoid flying during the summer and Christmas holidays. However, not everyone has the flexibility to fly whenever they want during the year. So here are three ways to save money on flights throughout the year.
Chase the deal, not the destination
A popular adage among frequent travelers, instead of having a specific destination in mind for your upcoming vacation, look at which destination is cheapest for your dates. Google Flights and Skyscanner both have an Explore feature to help narrow down a good destination.
How to use the Explore Feature in Google Flights
To look for flights by price rather than destination, go to google.com/flights. Click Explore destinations above the map on the home page.
In the following screen, leave the Destination field empty! Click the dates to select your preferred dates. You can either leave the dates Flexible and select an amount of time during a certain month or select Specific Dates.
Once your dates are selected, click the All Filters button and adjust your requirements as desired. You can select the maximum price, the number of layovers, flight duration, airline preference, and number of bags. To have the most options possible, I only adjust the maximum price I’m willing to pay.
Once that’s done, explore the map to view the available destinations, and take your pick!
How to use the Explore Feature in Skyscanner
To look for flights worldwide on Skyscanner, go to Skyscanner.com. Enter your starting airport, enter Everywhere in the Destination field. Enter your dates and click Search.
You will get a list of flights to various destinations.
If you don’t feel like manually searching for cheap flights all the time, there are several websites that offer cheap flight alerts throughout the year. Get a guide of my preferred websites by signing up for the newsletter!
Take a positioning flight
A positioning flight is a flight leaving from your main airport to another city solely to catch a cheaper flight from there. For example, your home airport is YUL in Montreal, but there’s a $200 roundtrip flight to Senegal from New York City, you need to take a positioning flight from Montreal to NYC to benefit from that deal.
I personally have most of the Northeast international airports set as home airports in my cheap flights subscriptions. In addition to Montreal, I track flights leaving from Ottawa, Toronto, New York, Boston, and Chicago as they are all a quick flight or train ride away. Miami and Fort Lauderdale are good cities to track for deals to Latin America. Finally, West coast airports – Vancouver, Los Angeles, San Francisco – are great for deals to Asia and Oceania.
Of course, you have to take into account the cost of the positioning flight and – possibly – one night’s accommodation to make sure that the deal is still a deal. But, in my experience, the cost has been worth it more often than not.
Combine one-way flights
This strategy is particularly effective in Europe and Asia where intraregional flights can be purchased for as little as $20. Where most people would look for a round-trip flight when booking their vacation, combining multiple one-way segments can end up cheaper.
For example, let’s say you’d like to go to Paris in peak summer season. You could look for your home airport to Paris and pay over $1000 roundtrip. Or you could fly to London or Dublin one ticket, then fly to Paris on a low-cost airline ticket, then fly from Paris back to your home airport on another ticket. If you manage to snag a good deal on a ticket to Continental Europe (Paris, Amsterdam, Lisbon, Barcelona, etc.), then you also have the option of taking the train to get to your destination. On my last trip to Europe, I bought one-way from Montreal to London, then one-way from London to Paris, then one-way from Paris to Amsterdam, then the train from Amsterdam back to Paris, and finally a one-way flight from Paris to Montreal to return home.
This strategy can also be used for trips to North Africa, Eastern Europe, and the Middle East.
There are a few caveats though. This strategy requires you to travel light and you also have to line up your flights in a way that you won’t have to spend an extra day in your layover city while also leaving enough time between flights so that delays won’t affect your itinerary. Thankfully, most flights from North America to Europe land in the morning so you can book an afternoon or evening flight to your final destination.
You can also use this strategy if you notice that a round-trip flight has one or two layovers. Look at the itinerary of the round-trip flight, then copy the same itinerary with one-way segments and compare prices. For example, let’s say you’d like to fly to Peru. A round-trip flight would look like [your home airport] – Mexico City / Panama City – Lima – Mexico City / Panama City – [your home airport]. Instead of booking that itinerary with one airline, you would do a search for [your home airport] – Mexico City / Panama City. Then another search for Mexico City / Panama City – Lima. Then the reverse to return home and add up all the segments. Although you lose the security of being with one airline, you can save some money during the most expensive seasons.
BONUS: Use credit card points
A bonus tip to save money on flights is to use credit card points to either apply on your flight purchase or transfer to an airline program such as Aeroplan, Flying Blue, or SkyMiles. You can either fully fund a round-trip flight with your points or apply the strategies above. Pay for a positioning flight with points instead of cash? Why not? Use your points on one or more segments of your itinerary? Go for it! The possibilities are endless.
If you’d like to learn how to accumulate credit card points, don’t hesitate to book a session with me to gain an understanding of the various programs and points.
I hope that these tips will help you save money on flights moving forward! Comment below if you have other tips you’d like to share!
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