How can I find a cheap plane ticket?

When you’re preparing for your trip, once you’ve decided on your destination, the main problem is how to find a cheap plane ticket !

With the airline crisis, the bankruptcy of major travel companies and soaring paraffin prices, aviation has never been so expensive, and the days of low-cost tickets are clearly over!

Transport accounts for a large part of the travel budget, especially if you’ve chosen to travel to remote areas! Save your money for your holiday, not for transport, with these tips you need to know before you buy your ticket!

10 foolproof tips for paying less for your plane ticket!

1) Use a good flight comparison service.

This may seem obvious, but it’s not! Many people don’t take the time to scour the web for the best fare, or prefer to take the flight recommended by their travel agent. Your favourite travel agent is certainly entitled to special fares (less and less so, in fact), but they also charge a margin on the zero-rated price of the ticket, because they have to make money! There are other undeniable advantages linked of course to after-sales service and any problems that may arise, but here we’re talking purely about fares and good deals, so we absolutely have to use flight comparison services.

Here are the 6 best flight comparison sites

1.google flights

We like Google Flights above all for its calendar showing the prices offered on each date. If you’re flexible, this is an excellent first tool for deciding when to go. It will save you trying out a thousand combinations of dates until you find the cheapest one! Its ‘explore’ function is also very useful if you’re short of inspiration, as it gives you return prices for all possible destinations from your departure city at a glance. Google flight isn’t necessarily the easiest way of redirecting you to buy, but it’s a good first step in working out your travel plans and finding the cheapest dates.

2. Kiwi.com

Kiwi.com has moved up a gear. It’s no longer just an old-fashioned flight comparator. The Czech company is banking on low-cost travel and a mix of good tips from travellers with experience of new technologies to show you what the airlines would prefer to hide from you! They describe themselves as system hackers! They have the same calendar system as Google flights. Here are some of the services they offer that make all the difference.

• Autonomous transfer: You can combine a plane with a bus or train in a single booking, for more choice and better fares on an itinerary you wouldn’t have thought of yourself.
• Hidden cities : a first for kiwi, you can take a ticket with a stopover in your final destination city and ‘forget’ the second part of the journey. It may sound crazy, but it’s sometimes more interesting to get off en route! Some cities are more popular than others!
• Disposable tickets: Airlines overcharge for single tickets. It’s always best to choose a return ticket. Kiwi will always offer you the lowest fare, even if it’s a return ticket when you’ve only requested a single ticket! It’s up to you to decide whether or not to use the return fare!

3. Ulysse

Cock-a-doodle-doo, this is the latest flight comparison service and it’s 100% French! Innovative criteria, such as ecological considerations, which tell you which flight emits the least carbon on your route, a modern, ad-free and easy-to-access interface, clear navigation and always a suggestion of the three best flights before you are drowned in information. Ulysse isn’t just a comparator, it’s also a travel agency. So you can manage your booking, take out cancellation insurance with no strings attached and talk to real people if you have a problem! That’s a real luxury in this day and age of call centres at the other end of the world, where no-one can ever help you.

No hidden charges that appear every couple of clicks, the price quoted at the outset is the price you’re going to pay! Unless, of course, you add options yourself.

4. Skyscanner

The doyen of the party, Skyscanner, is perhaps the best known and most widely used flight comparison site. And rightly so! Skyscanner has a knack for finding the cheapest fares! You don’t have to choose an airport! You can simply define the country you want to fly to, and the robot will suggest various options! And if you don’t have any ideas, you can simply click on “everywhere” and let yourself be tempted!

5. Algofly

Algofly, as its name suggests, uses an algorithm in addition to its search comparator. It compares your result with the statistics and history of price curves observed in previous years for the same destination. It will therefore tell you the best prices on the market, but also whether they are likely to go down or whether, on the contrary, you’ve just unearthed a golden bargain and can’t pass it up!

6. Momondo

This Danish flight comparator is just like its country: clear and tidy! It’s easy to use and the interface is highly visual. Graphs show price trends and give you advice on the best time to buy your flight, as well as information on the different airlines offering your route or the best month to get where you want to go!

2. be flexible

As you can see from your flight comparison sites, prices can double or even triple depending on the date you choose. It’s true that not everyone is lucky enough to be able to go out of season, or to take their holidays as they please, but as far as possible, it’s very important to be flexible by at least one or two days.
Avoid going away at the weekend as much as possible. The best time to travel is between Tuesday and Thursday.

Timetables can also influence fares. If you don’t mind getting up at the crack of dawn or sleeping at the airport, don’t hesitate to look at the fares for flights with impossible schedules! More difficult to fill, they are often a little cheaper.

The same applies to days when nobody wants to travel! Like Christmas and New Year’s Day!

And don’t forget the calendar of the country you’re going to! Their major holidays, traditional festivals or special celebrations! (Chinese New Year, Rio Carnival, Semana Santa etc.)

3: Look for the hub

Airlines operate on the hub principle. They all have to go through their hub airport. If you fly with Air France and leave from the provinces, you will inevitably pass through Paris, even if you have the impression that you are “moving backwards”. So think about your airline’s hub, and see if you can’t finish the journey yourself!

For example, if you’re going to South East Asia, you can look directly at your final destination, but you can also zoom out and look at the big hubs around it. It’s perfectly possible to find a cheaper flight to Singapore or Kuala Lumpur, spend a few days there (or not) and then continue your journey on a local low-cost flight or even, in some cases, using public transport!

4 – Choosing the right time

Finding the best travel dates isn’t enough – you also need to know when to book! Packing your bags and grabbing a last-minute ticket at the airport for next to nothing is a myth you only see in the movies! Airlines have a certain number of seats per category within each booking class. When the cheapest seats are sold out, you fall into the higher price bracket.

Planning ahead (3 months is enough) is an important factor in obtaining a good price. Secondly, it’s true that companies update their sites and may put more attractive fares back on sale. They say you should look atTuesday night , but that’s no rocket science! In any case, what is certain is that you should avoid looking for your ticket between 6pm and 10pm! That’s rush hour when you get off work! Set your alarm and do your research before 6am !

5) Look elsewhere

Air ticket prices can sometimes vary depending on the country of purchase! It’s not normal, I admit, but it’s true! Airlines also set their prices according to travellers’ wallets. Don’t hesitate to do this little test. Look for the web extensions of the countries in which the selected airline operates and redo your search with the new extension behind the .com (.es, .it, .ca ; .mx , .ar.) This isn’t true for all airlines and it doesn’t work every time, but you can find some pretty big differences on the same flight, so it’s worth a try!

6 – Travel incognito

You probably know this, but don’t always do it, so remember to do your research incognito! Clear your history, empty your cookies and switch to private browsing. You can also activate the VPN (virtual Private Network) if you have one.

Prices go up as you search! As a result, you’re afraid it’s going to get worse and you rush out to buy!

7. think low cost

Low-cost airlines don’t appear on flight comparison sites, simply because they refuse to pay them commissions. If you’re travelling within Europe, you’ll know how to use EasyJet or Ryanair. But as soon as you go a little further afield, you don’t know what to do!

The last few years have been very complicated for airlines, both large and small. Some have gone out of business, while others have received considerable help from their own countries. And in the midst of all this, others have been born.

When you’re doing your research, use the comparators to check whether there’s a low-cost airline you might not have thought of for your destination. For example, Norse Atlantic, the Norwegian long-haul low-cost airline, offers flights to the United States for less than €200!

Once you’ve arrived, you may also need a domestic flight. So check out the low-cost airlines on the continent where you are! Tiger Airways and Air Asia will offer you flights as low as €10 in Asia, and Spiritairlines in the United States offers a wide range of low fares across the country and Central America! If you want to combine a trip to Los Angeles with a week in Mexico, it’s much cheaper to take a return ticket from Paris to Los Angeles and another domestic return ticket from LA to Cancun!

8 Always take a return ticket

The basics. A one-way flight is never worth it (except on low-cost airlines). What’s more, some destinations require a return ticket to board! After that, you can be lucky and go on a trip for years with just one single ticket in your pocket, or you can find yourself at the airport, forced to rush out and buy a return ticket in order to be allowed to board (believe me, in both cases, it’s been done!).

So, one thing leads to another. If you want the freedom to travel without time constraints, or to expatriate yourself abroad, and don’t want to buy a return ticket, you should know that there is a specialist site (One Way Flight ), which provides you with return tickets for €19, whatever the destination. Please note that these are not real tickets and you will not be able to travel with them. They are simply 14-day return flight booking vouchers, which will be cancelled as the flight has not been paid for. Entirely legal, no problem there.

On the other hand, if you’re thinking of returning but don’t know when, it’s always better to take a return ticket. Check the conditions carefully and make sure that your ticket can be changed, if possible at a lower cost. You can thenchange your return date (beware of any fare differences).

Sometimes the return ticket is even cheaper than the one-way ticket! In that case, don’t hesitate. All you have to do is cancel your return flight (don’t forget that some airport taxes on flights not taken are refundable!) However, this does not work the other way round! If you don’t board your outbound flight for whatever reason, your return flight is lost!

9. Check out the bargain sites

Some sites specialise in finding bargains. This is the case of the French site “Voyages Pirates“, for example. They look for special offers or pricing errors on your behalf and are paid a commission on the price. So don’t panic, you won’t pay anything more than the advertised price! You can also check out theSecret Flyingsite orHolidayguru.

In the “good deals” category, don’t forget to look at your stopovers! You’re leaving for Costa Rica and your flight stops for 3 hours in Miami or New York? Why not turn those 3 hours into 3 days? Most of the time, it will cost you nothing or next to nothing and you’ll have had a short stay in New York without having to spend anything extra!

You can do this yourself, by breaking the flight down into two parts, once you’ve seen which stopover your airline is making, or by calling customer service to change the second leg (again, both cases are real life, and both work!).

10) Think about multi-destination travel

If you’re going on a long trip and you’re going to cross a large country like Australia, the United States or Canada, or if you’re visiting two countries like Peru and Bolivia, or if you want to finish your safari in Tanzania with 4 days in Zanzibar, don’t buy your ticket before you’ve thought through and validated your travel plan!

Arriving and departing from the same city can be extremely restrictive and waste precious time trying to retrace your steps!

A typical example in the United States is arriving in Los Angeles and leaving from San Francisco! In Australia, don’t hesitate to arrive in Cairns and leave from Melbourne, in Canada, arrive in Vancouver and leave from Calgary, or arrive in Peru in Lima and leave from La Paz in Bolivia.

Flight comparators offer the multi-destination option. All you have to do is fill in your travel dates, and the price will be calculated as a return ticket rather than two single tickets.

This may also allow you to make part of the journey by land or via national low-cost flights.

In conclusion

You now have all the tools you need to beat the system and find the cheapest plane ticket on the market!

Enjoy your trip!