How to Find Cheap Flights (How to Travel More)
We love travel. We always have. But traveling did not become an obsession for us until we found a cheap flight to Europe. Usually flights to Europe from the US start around $500 and go up. On this occasion, we found a flight (courtesy of scottscheapflights, now Going) to Europe for $178. It was an open jaw trip, which means there were four airports involved. It was round trip with one stop each way in Seattle, and Vancouver respectively. Even buying tickets to Seattle and home from Vancouver (both places we wanted to go anyway), it was a steal.
In December 2023 we took nine days to go through six countries, over a dozen cities, and it was exhausting and delightful. We never would have gone if we had not found tickets that we couldn’t say no to, and we would not have kept traveling if we hadn’t kept finding tickets that were, frankly, far less expensive than we ever knew they could be. That’s why we made this website, because we never realized it could be affordable to travel and see so much of the world.
Enough anecdotes. How do we find cheap flights?
First, use the right tools. If you are looking in the wrong places or in the wrong manner, you’ll become frustrated and achieve nothing. Google Flights is the best tool to find cheap flights for free, full stop, end of discussion, period. It is a free and powerful tool that anyone with an internet connection can take advantage of. We have found about 50% of our trips on our own using Google Flights to find them. Spend an hour learning how to sort and filter flights and you’ll begin to find the best deals available whenever you search. GF has a tool showing the historic price of flights to and from your selected airports, making your price comparisons much easier to do.
It used to be the case that Southwest Airlines did not show up on Google Flights, but that is no longer the case. We are not aware of any airline that does not show their pricing on GF, so it really is the most inclusive tool to use.
There are other tools out there too, like TravelZoo, Skyscanner, and Skiplagged as well as many, many more. Travelzoo is a deal aggregator, and often has appealing itineraries and combos including flights and accommodations. Skyscanner compares flights in a manner similar to Google Flights and some people may prefer its layout and user interface.
Skiplagged tries to find cheaper options by gaming the system in an activity called skiplagging. This is where you buy a ticket from LA to New York, for example, with a layover in Chicago, but you wanted to go to Chicago all along and simply get off there. You would do this because the ticket from LA to NYC was cheaper than the ticket from LA to Chicago, saving you money. This is not illegal, but airlines do not like the practice as they make less money than simply selling the LA to Chicago ticket.
Second, your departure airport needs to be as open as possible. Price comes first and after that we are pretty flexible. If you NEED tickets at a specific time to a specific place, from a specific place, there are no tricks or strategies to help you; the price is the price, and that is that. The more flexible you are, the more options there are, the more likely there will be a deal available at some time, usually in the off season for that location. That isn’t a bad thing though, as the off season has a lot of benefits.
We live within driving distance of 6 major international airports. If we are looking for a deal to somewhere on another continent or the Caribbean, we have a lot of options. We will also search smaller airports that are closer to our home, as we are fine with transfers and layover if we’re going to save a substantial sum.
A Google Flights pro tip: You can type in seven departure airports and seven arrival airports at the same time, potentially searching 49 routes at once. That means if you are willing to leave from several different airports or cities, or fly into different airports, you can do all the legwork of finding the least expensive in one search. You can also tweak the dates around your selected dates quickly using the Date Grid. It will show you the prices on those arrival and departure dates around the ones you selected, which is helpful if you are flexible by a few days either way.
Parking can be a big part of the cost of your trip, and goes hand in hand with selecting an airport. Get dropped off and picked up and you can save a lot of money in gas and parking. For example, the long term lot at O’Hare starts at $15 per day. A seven day trip is going to run you $105, plus gas, tolls, etc, and a two week trip is going to be $210 in parking alone. It may be cheaper to depart from a closer airport, even if the tickets cost more, because of what you’ll save over the course of the trip in terms of transportation. Your small, local airport may have flights to your larger departure airport, but you may save money after factoring the cost of those tickets and the cost of driving and parking versus being dropped off by a friend.
For parking in the US and Canada, we suggest an app called SpotHero. They operate in 300 cities and have some great rates in places you may not think to look for parking. We’ve parked at restaurants, churches, and parking garages that would have been hard to find. SpotHero is perfect for finding parking in large, downtown areas before we head there; we book a time, for a set rate, and show up. It takes a lot of the hassle out of finding parking, and there are both short and long term options.
Third, don’t be picky about your destinations! The fewer boxes you have to check, the more places you can go to satisfy your list. If you want Rialto Beach in Puerto Rico, there are only three airports you can fly in to, and there’s one a lot closer than the other two. You just want a beach? There are a LOT of countries with beaches. You want a Caribbean beach? There are 13 countries in the Caribbean and hundreds of quality beaches. That’s a lot of options. You want Aruba and nothing else? Then you have to pay the going rate for Aruba at the time you want go.
It is a lot simpler and cheaper to plan the type of trip you want to go on, and fit a destination into that mold. The more specific you are at the beginning, the fewer options there will be, and the more expensive it will be.
Fourth, the off-season is way better than you think. The flowers of Paris may not be in bloom in December, but the Christmas markets are in full swing, the lines for the Louvre are short, and the plane tickets are far cheaper than in July. Sure it’s cold, but you can wear that nice coat you never wear and feel pretty on the Champs d'Elysee or take some pictures by the carousel at the foot of the Sacre Coeur.
Anecdotally, we have been to France, Belgium, the Netherlands, England, Italy, Puerto Rico, Costa Rica, the Pacific Northwest, and many more places in the “off-season”, and regretted nothing. The amount of money we have saved in plane tickets, museum tickets, food, and lodging has made it possible to nearly double the amount of trips we could afford, so we are very much fans of the “off-season”.
A shoutout to another cheap flight tool, Going, which we have used for years and which has found us even more affordable airfare. They take a lot of the work out of looking for flights, sending us alerts for select airports and when there are great deals. We highly recommend them, both the free version of the service and the paid version. Scott Keyes, the founder of Going, has a great book, Take More Vacations, which we also recommend to anyone who wants to… take more vacations. We are only affiliated with Going as paying members, and we have simply found the service useful for traveling.
The same goes for the other service we suggest here. No one is paying us (yet), we just find them useful.
