Our Guide to Buying Cheap Flights!

Catch flights, not more expenses!

So your bestie is getting married (YAY!) and she’s chosen the perfect destination for her bachelorette party and …it’s all the way across the country. While you’re pumped for the vacay and to celebrate your girl, your bank account is probably screaming at the thought of purchasing that flight. Welcome to the club :’) Buying your flight can be the most expensive part of any trip and the search can be overwhelming with constantly changing prices and thousands of different sites that swear they have the cheapest prices.

Lucky for you, I have a secret sauce that when executed correctly will cook up some killer flight deals that will leave your bank account with a little breathing room for that extra mimosa bar from Bach Babes on your trip! ;) Now let’s get this straight, I don’t know everything there is to know about flight booking, but I am definitely a bargain shopper and love to travel so those two loves have concocted into a weird obsessed with finding the cheapest flight deals - So let’s get started!

First things first!

Don’t listen to the people telling you that there is a magical day of the week or time of day time that flights drastically drop and that you should wait until that time to book. What it really takes is a little bit of patience and quick action to catch the deals when they are the lowest. Lots of people open airline credit cards and many people use loyalty points to get free flights.. I'm scared of credit cards and I'm all over the place when it comes to being loyal to an airline so I just stick with a tactical tools that help me find the best deals. I use these tools in conjunction when booking my travel:

Google Flights

Google Flights is a user-friendly search tool that includes airlines and 3rd party booking sites to find the cheapest deals. I always use Google Flights when I am in the early stages of planning a trip because you can easily see the current price of a flight and how your travel date compares to those around it. If your dates are flexible, you can quickly play around with dates to see how the price fluctuates. You can also see how much your flight would be out of a nearby airport and how much money you would save if you left on a cheaper day near your trip’s date.

The only downside with Google Flights is that it doesn’t include Southwest flights so you will have to do a separate search on Southwest’s website to ensure that you aren’t missing out on a Southwest deal. Also this isn’t super applicable if you already know where your trip is, but if you’re trying to help the bride decide where to take the trip, there is a feature on Google Flights where you can search “Everywhere” and it will show you the cheapest destinations for your dates! That way if your group is on a budget, you can narrow out the places you’re interested in going to save the other bridesmaids a little $$$

Hopper

Hopper- This tool is as close to a future-seeing crystal ball as you’re going to get. I’m unsure how they are able to see the future, but I’m not questioning the magic. Hopper analyzes flight prices to predict how prices will change and tells you whether to buy or wait. Download the Hopper app and start tracking a trip that you hope to take. The app will tell you whether it predicts flights prices to stay the same, go up, or decrease and will notify you when those things happen. Oftentimes airlines run quick 12-hour sales or a flight price plummets down and Hopper will notify you that you should buy RIGHT THEN. Once I receive the green light from Hopper, I head to Google Flights and book through Google Flights. With Hopper, you should have your debit card on standby so you get the best deal. But also prepare for the heartbreak of buying a flight and Hopper telling you two weeks later that the flight price has gone down $100.. Unfortunately no one can predict completely accurately when it comes to the ups and downs of flight prices, but Hopper is the closest thing I’ve found! I recently booked a trip to Cabo and started tracking it on Hopper. The day after I began tracking it, the flight price decreased $200 and Hopper told me it would only stay like that for 24 hours, so you better believe I grabbed my wallet and trusted Hopper. 10/10 recommend watching flights on Hopper, even if the trip seems out of reach, you never know what crazy one-day deal might come about!

Scotts Cheap Flights

I recently heard about Scott’s Cheap Flights while sitting at a bar in Boston talking to a nomad couple about how they find their next destination. Be prepared for your imagination to run wild with this one. The wives tale has it that a man named Scott had a knack for finding outrageously cheap international flights and his friends wanted to know what his recent flight bargains were so he set up a newsletter to go to his friends. More and more people started signing up for the newsletter and his newsletter turned into a business where he (and now a team of employees) notify millions of people of outrageously cheap international flights. To get started, you sign up for the free newsletter and begin receiving daily emails about trips from your home base airport. You can’t specify the destination you want to head to with this one, it’s more of a luck of the draw thing if you’re looking for a crazy cheap flight. Or if you’re an adventurer like me, it might help you decide on your next travel destination!

Many of the flight deals I receive are places I’ve never thought about traveling to, but once I see the price, I think “ya know, maybe I have always wanted to go to Rio De Janeiro, who knew?” I’ve seen flights from Atlanta to Rio ($562), Florence, Italy ($320), Iceland ($385), Puerto Rico ($230), and Beijing ($446). The emails they send don’t always include my home city, and probably won’t always include where you would be flying out of, but that's why it is free. There is a paid option where you can pay $99 per year to receive emails that only pertain to your home airport, but I’m cool with a few extra emails and an extra $99 to spend on flights. The email will give you a date range around what dates will be within this cheap window and how long this deal will last!

Skiplagged

Okay this one could be slightly frowned upon, but a deal is a deal! Skiplagged is an airfare search engine that shows hidden-city ticketed trips. Basically what that means is you might be wanting to fly into Nashville, but the direct flight to Nashville is $600, however there is a flight to Miami that has a layover in Nashville for $300 - so you’re saving $300 by just not getting on your next flight! There are some downsides to Skiplagged like the fact that it is against the terms and conditions of most airlines, but if you do it correctly, you’re fine :’) You can’t check a bag because it will be sent directly to the flight’s final destination and if the flight is full of luggage and they make you check it at the gate, you’re kind of screwed. I’ve only used Skiplagged once and the gate checking thing happened to me and I begged the flight attendant to let me bring it on the plane, and she did, but it was quite the scare. So definitely use this method with caution! I generally use Skiplagged as a last option if the flight is crazy expensive, just to check if there is a much cheaper option! Definitely weigh the pros and cons on this one.

Southwest Website

Unpopular opinion coming up: Southwest is my favorite airline. I have found that the fairs are the cheapest, they allow you to choose your own seat, you get a free checked bag, and you can change your flight for free (even on the day of). With a large group and the current pandemic, the possibility to change your flight whenever is a huge plus and Southwest will continue to be my airline of choice because of it. Southwest keeps it’s flights prices relatively cheap by not allowing 3rd parties to sell their flights. This is why you won’t see Southwest flights on things like Google Flights, Kayak, Priceline, etc. This can be a pain because you have to spend extra time going to their website separately, but it pays off in the end.

A quick travel hack with Southwest: Choosing your seat with Southwest is based on when you check in to your flight. Check-in opens exactly 24-hours before your flight departs. Set an alarm for exactly 24-hours in advance and drop whatever you are doing in that moment and check yourself in. This will ensure that you can get princess seating and get a window seat near the front of the plane.

Extra Fees

Don't let airlines get you with extra fees. When booking through smaller airlines like Allegiant or Spirit, make sure to read the fine print for fees. These fees include things like baggage (make sure to check that the price includes baggage to and from, most places charge you double the price you see), seat fees, printing out your boarding pass fees, fees for breathing (kidding, kind of). In my experience, I've seen that it’s worth spending the extra money on airlines that don't charge you hidden fees because at the end of the day, it will end up being around the same price.

I am more than okay with traveling cheap, it makes me happier finding an awesome deal than sitting first class on a plane. The cheaper it is, the more trips I can take, and that mindset is why/how I travel as often as I do! I hope these tips will help you score big on your next trip you take so you can spend a little extra dolla dolla bills on showering your bride :) If you have any questions or want more tips, feel free to reach out to me!

Happy Travels!