One of my most asked questions is how do you travel as much as you do? Well the main answer to that question is because I’ve become a master at finding cheap flight deals and jumping on them! There are quite a few ways to get cheap flights or even fly for free if you can believe it! Keep in mind that a lot of these tips require you to be pretty flexible about where and when you are going somewhere.
Flights from home
Honestly this is my most used and top rated way to get cheap flight deals. Pretty much every trip i’ve gone on the last two years has been because of these guys. Flights From Home is an email service that literally just emails you deals as they show up and tells you how to buy them, where and when it is, what airline, what bags are included in the price and how long the deal will last approximately. The only downside is that currently they only base their flights that they find out of Salt Lake City Airport, Saint George Airport and Las Vegas Airport. They have a free version which gives you about a ⅓ or a ¼ of the deals that the paying members get. I pay only $30 a year for the premium which is totally worth it.
They usually run deals a few times a year which is when i bought it. Most of the deals only last about 24-48 hours and are usually 3-8 months put depending on the deal which is why you have to jump on the deal and make a decision a little faster than “normal planning”. We went to French Polynesia for $500 when it’s usually $1000+, Kauai Hawaii for $250 and usually its $350-$500, Fairbanks Alaska for $200 and usually its $500 and then we have Greece booked for August 2021 (we will see if it happens) for $450! Usually it’s close to $900 especially coming from the west coast. This isn’t sponsored, I just love them haha and I owe most of our traveling to them.
Scotts Cheap Flights
So I personally have actually not used this particular service, but i do know its almost exactly the same as Flights From Home, they service the whole USA though if i’m not mistaken. This one sounds great and i’m curious to maybe join as well to see if they get any deals i don’t already get but it’s a great option if you don’t live in Utah or Nevada.
Skyscanner + Hopper + Skiplagged
This might be an unpopular opinion but I’m not a huge fan of these anymore. A few years ago they were pretty decent to help track a specific flight and let you know when it drops or search for cheaper days than usual. But now I feel like Google Flights is easier to use for a lot of that, plus I’ve had times where I’ve had an alert set on one of these apps and then i get a flight deal through Flights From Home for the same time period and the other apps don’t usually even alert me to the drop in price. If you really need a specific place and date to fly then they could still be helpful but other than that I wouldn’t bother.
Google Flights
Most of my flight deals from Flights From Home are just found on Google Flights. It’s harder to catch the flight deals on your own through them but it is a great tool to scope out what months or days might be cheaper. If you put in your destination and then just show the whole calendar view instead of putting in dates, it will show in green the days that are lower than normal.
Chase Sapphire Credit Card Points
I’m usually not a big fan of travel credit cards, a lot of them aren’t worth it in the end. But this one has been the best for getting us free flights, we combine a flight deal from Flights From Home and book it through our Chase Travel portal to use our points and almost ¾ of our flights the last two years have been free because of this. Chase Sapphire does have an annual fee but my mom has used this card for over 30 years and after seeing the amount of points we get I think it’s definitely worth it. If you use my link to sign up for the card it gives you extra points and me extra points so I would totally appreciate it if you end up using my link. If you have any questions about the card please feel free to reach out as well.
Other Tips:
Book flights 3-7 months ahead of time!
Now sometimes you can get lucky and find a last minute deal but after watching the deals come in from Flights From Home I can see that this is the time period most tickets are the lowest depending on if its domestic or international. If you book too far ahead prices are usually still high since they have so much room on the plane still, the closer it gets to the date, the more they want to fill more seats so they are more likely to drop the price. Now if you wait until like two weeks before then usually they will jump back up again since they know those last few seats will be in high demand.
Fly during the offseasons!
If you try to go to Cancun in March flights will shoot up because it’s spring break and they know they can make more money then. So make sure to avoid major holidays if possible and google your locations offseason and see if the weather is still to your liking. I promise you’ll save quite a bit of money by not going during the high season when everyone else is going for spring break, summer break etc.
Fly midweek instead of weekends!
It’s been proven that Tuesday-Thursday are the cheapest days to fly. I know this can be a pain if you are wanting to do a weekend trip to avoid taking off work but you can usually utilize a long weekend, find a red eye or late flight on thursday to avoid taking too much time off depending on how far you are traveling. Most weeklong trips that I take I leave and come back on a wednesday or thursday.
Only fly in and out of big airports if you can!
Usually the smaller the airport, the more expensive the ticket. For example if you fly into Aspen instead of Denver it’ll be almost $300 more but it does save you the driving time. So obviously do your research and make a decision based on what works best for you.
Book using a private browsing window! If you search for a flight multiple times over a few days the price will automatically go up. I know it’s so silly. So to avoid this just open a private browser or go into incognito mode depending on your search engine of choice.
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