5 ways to cut your expense on flight tickets

Planning a trip is always exciting, but your enthusiasm can get somewhat dampened when you actually get down to booking your flight tickets. Air travel is expensive! The more airline websites you browse, the more your heart sinks – you realise you are going to end up paying quite a packet on flight tickets alone!

But wait – whoever said that there is a solution to every problem was a very wise soul. Because it’s true – there are sure-fire ways to get great deals on flight tickets so that the money saved can be used on your trip. The following hacks are revealed by seasoned travellers who have used these simple tricks to great deals on air travel. You could try:

1 Booking your flight for a weekday. Though there is no single identifiable ‘cheap day’ for flying in or out of the country, it is normally seen that tickets are cheaper for late night or early dawn flights on weekdays. Most people book morning or evening flights so that they can reach their destination early and explore, but booking the ‘red eye’ hours when everyone’s asleep can actually get you cheaper tickets. Many seats are empty on these flights so you can get through comfortably.

2 Browsing for flight rates in ‘private’ mode. We’re wondering how to crack the algorithm on this one, but it turns out that airlines keep a close watch on how many people are browsing for specific routes, fares and dates. If airlines detect high interest in a certain flight, the air fares for it might increase in minutes. You might be tempted into booking at once before the prices climb even higher. Relax: just browse in ‘Incognito’ mode in your browser so that your searches cannot be tracked.

3 Booking budget airlines. It’s great to fly on a premium airline but you also have to pay through your nose to make the journey. If saving money on flights is your goal, you should simply book a ticket on budget airlines. A search on your browser indicating the destination country will reveal a list of budget airlines plying there. Take your pick and save your money.

4 Being clever with your stopover. Many flights connect to others with a stopover. When you see a stopover in your route, book from your origin country to the stopover. If the stopover is an interesting city, you could spend a couple of days there. Then book a weekday flight from the stopover to your destination country. This way you save money and also get a couple of days in another country to enjoy.

5 Never booking round trips on the same airline. You might be tempted to go online and simply punch in a few keys to finish your flight ticket booking in a matter of minutes. This might lead you into booking round trips with the same airline – this is a big mistake. Round trips are normally quite expensive as compared to two single trips. You can save money by booking departure and arrival flights on two different airlines. Time both so that you get cheap rates on them individually as well, for more savings.