Doing a Google search for “how to save money on flights” today will yield you around 141,000,000 results. That’s a ton of ideas but are there 141,000,000 ways to save? Not hardly. In reality, all of those results boil down to one primary thing you can do to save money.
The number one trick for saving money on flights is being flexible. Not just flexible in your dates of travel but also in your airport choices and the timing of when you purchase your ticket. Being open to using alternate days, airports, and when to buy will give you the greatest amount of savings for any flight.
Knowing how and where to be flexible is the key to these savings, so let’s take a more in-depth look at 3 specific ways you can be flexible.
1. Flexibility with Dates of Travel
If you’ve been searching for ways to save money on flights I’m sure you’ve heard this tip before. The reason you have is because it is the first way to save.
I’m sure (at least I hope) you’ve experienced this before. You price a flight to leave on a Friday and notice at the top of the search that if you leave on Saturday or Wednesday instead the flights are cheaper. I don’t mean Saturdays and Wednesdays are always cheaper, just that alternate days of the week might offer better rates. You just have to be willing to be flexible.
But saving money on flights is more than just changing the day of the week. To open yourself to the greatest savings, you also need to be flexible in the week and possibly even the month of travel. If you are traveling over the holidays or for a specific event, this may be harder to do (though altering the day of the week you travel will still help). If you are taking a vacation you may have more options.
A tool such as Google Flights’ Explore feature can help you decide which month and/or week is best to travel.
Add your departure airport (or airports) and where you would like to go at the top. Then enter the length of trip you are looking for and the time frame you are seeking and it will show you the best week or days to go to get the cheapest rates. Play with locations, length of trip, and travel time frames to customize your savings.
2. Flexibility With Your Airports
Did you know that opening your search to nearby airports (not just at home but also at your destination) can help you save big?
As an example, in my YouTube video “Save Money on Every Flight with this One Tactic“, I used this tactic to save over $500 on a flight to Europe.
I started by using Google Flights to price a flight from Orange County, California (my local airport) to London Heathrow on specific dates in July and August (I wanted to check if this worked in the high season as well as it does in the off-season). The cheapest price found was US$1336.
Being in Orange County, California I am lucky to be within driving distance of several airports including LAX, San Diego, Long Beach, and Ontario. This allowed me to add all of these airports as potential departure points to see if any had cheaper flights.
I didn’t stop there though. I also added all of the arrival airports that were within easy distance of London. Because I was looking for a European vacation, I spread these out beyond just the London area since I was planning to travel outside of London anyway. In this case, I added airports in other parts of the UK and Ireland and planned to incorporate them into my travel plans.
By adding these additional airports, I found a flight from LAX to Dublin for only $759. To see the exact steps I took you can view the video at https://youtu.be/qIemJiWQm9w.
3. Flexibility in Timing Your Purchase
Another thing you can be flexible on is the timing of when you buy your flight.
As I’m sure you know, flights go up and down in price as we get closer to your departure date. If you book your flight months in advance, before demand is high, you may be able to save some money. But buying early in and of itself doesn’t always give you the best price. There are also times closer to departure when the rates drop for a variety of reasons (also times the price skyrockets for different reasons).
To help you understand the optimal time to make your purchase, I recommend using a tool such as the following one on Google Flights (in the graphic below that says “Prices are currently typical for your search”:
In this example, I’m looking at a flight from Orange County, CA to London again, but this time I’m looking about 6 weeks from my current date. In the graph above, you can see the price stayed somewhat stable but had a nice dip about 30 days ago. I’m not sure why it dipped, but if we were monitoring prices and saw that dip it would have been the perfect time to buy.
As you are pricing your flights, be sure to check a feature similar to this to make sure you are not buying when prices are in the high yellow or red zones (if you can help it). Google Flights is my favorite flight-checking tool in part because of this feature.
There’s one additional feature I recommend using to help decide when to purchase – the “Track prices” toggle:
When you toggle this on for a flight you are interested in, Google will email you every time the price changes. This will allow you to keep an eye on the price without having to check the price manually every day. If you are booking in advance, this can help you catch those dips when they happen and save big on your flight.
Conclusion and Bonus Tip!
Flexibility in your travel dates, airports, and timing are the best ways to save money on flights. They are what make the biggest impact on your flight costs. But there is one additional tip I have for you that will allow you to utilize all three flexibility tips in one place in addition to having all of the available flights at your fingertips.
Use Google Flights
In my 20+ years of experience as a Travel Agent, I’ve used many, many flight booking tools to find the best rates for my clients. Through that experience, I have found Google Flights to be the absolute best place for finding the cheapest available flights.
You won’t book your flight through Google Flights – they are not a booking engine. Rather, they compile the available flights from various airlines, booking websites, consolidators, and more to bring you everything available for the flight you are seeking. Instead of looking at 20 different websites, save yourself some time and pain and start at Google Flights then book your flight where it says the best price can be had. And when you do, don’t forget to be flexible on your dates, your airports, and the timing of when you purchase.
Happy (and Safe) Travels!
