Everyone would like to travel and see far away places, but in these times, it’s cost of money and time that weighs us down. Next to the cost of accomodation – which will soon be tackled in its own article, getting to your dream destination is one of the two big expenses.

Here is a cut-down-to-the-essentials guide on how to always get the cheapest flight, save hundreds of dollars per flight and thousands per year or be able to afford a dream destination you thought previously financially impossible.    

Step by step:

Use a flight finder page, at the moment I always use skyscanner. 
Set the date for the whole month or the whole year and be time flexible to see on which days are the cheapest flights. Wednesdays are usually cheap, weekend and holidays expensive, as well as certain holiday seasons which differ from region to region. Supply and demand.
Clear cookies in your internet browser and refresh the page or change the language shown, if you previously were looking for flights to that destination. “Targeted marketing” means your previous search terms are saved and the provider knows what you need or are looking for, so will adjust the price by raising it. Use the aforementioned rebooting measures or open the page with another internet browser.
Choose the cheapest days. Check the list of flights on that day sorted by the cheapest offer and see which airline offers that cheapest flight, if you made sure the travel time plus transits is okay for you. Get all details of that flight but don’t book it.
Go to the homepage of the airline, search for that flight on said days using the details you just acquired and book it there. The flight finder page will take a small commission, so the price on the airline’s own website will be lower.


 Alternatively, check for special offers on travel pages that promote price bargains. In the german speaking world there is urlaubsguru, urlaubshamster and urlaubs-piraten. Make sure to check all country-versions of these pages, if they happen to be in reachable distance for you. That would be the Germany/Austria/Switzerland region for example, watch offers on .at, .de and .ch of the above mentioned pages.  
Sign-up for email newsletters or install their free mobile phone apps to get notified of offers on the flights you are interested in.
Some airlines offer flights with different return destinations, than their start destinations. One, those won’t be shown on normal searches because of different locations and two, you don’t know what the possible locations even are. Knowing them, you can search on the airlines homepage.
Some airlines have anniversary price reductions. Some airlines have special week-day reductions (like France’s KLM on wednesday for oversea flights from Europe). Sign-up for their newsletters to get notifications


Additionally: don’t forget to be location flexible. Some airports have cheaper offers than others. You can take the train, bus or even flight to a slightly more far away airport and take the flight to your end destination from there and still save money. For example, Munich is cheaper than Vienna. Frankfurt is cheaper than Munich.
See if cheap airlines are available for part of the flights or the whole trip to your destination.

Tip: Use the ryanair world map of destinations 

This map shows you which airports offer ryan air flights to which destinations and for which price. It pays off to work back from your end destination to see how to get there from the airport closest to your starting position. Or to even use detours by hopping around countries, if the complete end price is lower.  

Some tips for cheap airlines: make sure to read the flight information and  weight restrictions 100%. Some cheap airlines don’t include extra baggage in their flight bookings – only hand luggage up to certain measurements and weight (7kg is an example). Some don’t include the check-in service and you have to check-in online by yourself, or you need to print your own boarding card. These cheap airlines make money by charging high amounts for every mistake the customer does, by not reading their guidelines, so make sure you don’t make any.

Disclaimer: some cheap airlines like ryanair offer a mobile phone app as a free download, that allow to check-in for flights online and get a QR code sent to the phone that acts as a boarding pass. It pays off to install the app if you plan to use the airline several times, as now you don’t have to print out your boarding pass on your own every time – which can be costly and unneccessary complicated, if you’re abroad with no printer at home.

Have a good flight, enjoy your travels and don’t waste your money. Use it better.