One of the top questions people are always asking me is how I snag all of my cheap flights. I travel a lot and it’s almost always because I got a cheap flight to a new city and want to explore. So what’s the secret sauce? A few things:
International Flights:
Scott’s Cheap Flights: I’ve been a subscriber to Scott’s since 2015 and I have gotten almost 100% of my international tickets from deals they send out. SCF has gotten much more popular in the last few years, but for those of you who aren’t familiar, here’s how it works:
Choose if you want the free subscription or the Premium. I had the free for the first six months then started premium for a six month free trial I was offered, and haven’t looked back since. Normally I would always choose the free version of something as I am always saving up for my next adventure, but the $49/year is worth it in this situation. (*Note that I am grandfathered into old pricing because I started so long ago, I think prices have increased above the $49 now.) With Premium you receive more cheap flight alerts and you can further customize what you’re getting in your inbox. With either membership you select what departing airports you want to receive deals for.
Pro Tip: Don’t just do your local airport! Broaden your horizons for more deals. I’m not saying drive 6 hours to a further airport before you hop a flight, but if you know for instance that you visit family or friends in another city frequently, you might as well and that/those cities to your subscription list for free, just in case!
Once you are subscribed, SCF will start sending you cheap flight deals. If you don’t have notifications turned on for your email already I would recommend turning them on once you are a member. The deals they send out go fast!
Book your first flight! Everything Scott’s sends is legit. I've always gotten my tickets on “full-service” airlines, like Delta, not those crappy airlines like Wow, for a steal. Most of the time they are going through either Google Flights (more on that later) or Momondo. Sometimes they will send “mistake fares”, where clearly the travel agency did not actually mean to post the flight at that price, it’s not just a sale it is a true mistake. Mistake fares are tricky because the airline can go back on what they post the price as because it was not intentional, so if you ever decide to do a mistake fare deal be sure to either get traveler’s insurance or wait to book anything else for your trip (like lodging) until at least two weeks after your get the ticket to ensure the airline will honor it.
I’ve booked multiple trips to Europe, Australia, and Latin America through Scott’s Cheap Flights and I recommend it to everyone I talk to. Some of my cheap, round trip deals include: $330 from New Orleans to Costa Rica, $369 from Detroit to Dublin, $408 from New Orleans to Barcelona, $331 from New Orleans to Ecuador, $650 from Charlotte to Melbourne, and $296 from Charlotte to Paris. I can’t recommend Scott’s enough!
Domestic Flights
Scott’s Cheap Flights expanded in 2020 to include domestic deals as well. I’ve seen Charlotte to NYC for $33 and incredible deals all around the country! Just another reason to sign up!
Google Flights: I spend at least an hour per week on Google Flights playing around trying to decide on my next adventure. This is extreme. It takes less than 5 minutes to actually book a flight on Google Flights, don’t be scared off. I LOVE Google Flights. How does it work? You’ve got options:
If you have a set departure airport, destination airport, and timeline, you can just type those into the search boxes like normal and when the results come up you can pick your ideal airline, take off time, and return time. There are three things that make this seemingly normal search feature better on Google Flights than other search services: color coding, the results list order, and combining airlines:
If the ticket price is a good deal, lower than the average price, the price will be green. If it is average, it will be black. If it is higher than average, it will be red. So often people aren’t sure when they should book their flights—6 weeks out, 8 weeks out, Tuesday nights, etc. Google Flights takes the guesswork out with this color coding system. Green? Book. Black? Contemplate. Compare it to other dates to see how much you could potentially save and if it is worth waiting. Red? Don’t book, come back later.
The order in which Google Flights shows you results is also fantastic. They show the best flights first, in terms of price, stops, and overall travel time. Other travel sites show the cheapest first with you flying for 18 hours and stopping at 3 different airports, which is incredibly unreasonable. Google Flights knows you don’t want to do that, so they will still show you that deal, but they’ll put cheap, normal flights ahead of that result in the list order.
My other favorite piece of your normal Google Flight search is that you can combine tickets with different airlines. You can get a departing flight from Delta, for example, but fly back on American. Google Flights allows you to mix and match so you can get your ideal price and ideal flight times.
If you don’t know where you want to go, you just know you have time off from work or school and want to go somewhere, Google Flights allows you to search with your set dates and no destination. Most flight search engines force you to know your destination, which I hate. Most of the time I don’t really care where I am heading, I know that I will make the most of it, I just want to see where I can go for a deal when I have specific dates that I am looking to travel. You can compare the entire country (and internationally as well!) from your departure airport to anywhere. The same color coding above applies here as well, so you know where the deals are.
What I usually do is type in my days that I have off, set the price limit box to $300, and see where I can go. I’ve gone to more “off the beaten path” destinations from searches like this. New Orleans to Little Rock, Arkansas? $180. New Orleans to Chicago? $98. Charlotte to Fort Worth? $190. Open your mind and go for it!
The last situation is that you don’t have a set timeline, and either you do or you don’t have a destination. Maybe you work remotely, have some saved up PTO, or whatever your situation may be, this can be daunting to have an open calendar of potential travel. If you don’t know where you want to go or when, Google Flights has got your back. They will recommend great deals based on your departure airport. For example when I pull up Google Flights right now without typing anything in they are telling me from Charlotte, my set home airport, I can go to LA for $249 for a week in January, NYC for $145, in January, or Seattle for $295 in March. These are the deals they automatically pull, and they tell you how much lower these prices are than average (that Seattle deal is $142 less than average!)
Note—Google Flights pulls all airlines except Southwest. So if Southwest is your jam, I recommend using Expedia, or booking from their website, which I’ll talk about next!
Airline deals: Some airlines are really good at posting deals and sending them to your inbox. In particular, Southwest and Spirit are consistently sending out deals for half off one way flights, $49 one way flights, etc. I’ve booked several of these deals, just beware that a majority of the time they will pull you in and then charge a high price for round trip or for the dates you want, so don’t get too excited when you see these. Occasionally they do pan out though so I always investigate further!
Miles: Lastly, I book with Frequent Flier miles. Now I know, you have to book flights or spend money to get miles. BUT, every now and then you can stumble into some miles that will get you multiple flights. Examples:
I was on a Spirit flight the weekend of Halloween a few years ago and they were doing Spirit trivia for prizes for “Spirit Week”. I won the trivia which meant I got vouchers for miles!
I got screwed over by Delta twice within 4 months when flying back to the US from Europe and I continually complained for months until they gave me both money and miles. Don’t give up if something like this happens to you!
Delta also allows you to earn miles for Lyft rides and Airbnb stays, which I absolutely love! Lyfts to and from airports earn you double the miles so make sure to connect your app to your Delta account! It may not seem like some Lyfts and Airbnbs could get you that many miles but I’ve gotten 580 miles just from Lyfts in the last month. Starbucks and Delta are now linked as well.
Consider an airline credit card if you find yourself using the same airline consistently. Since Charlotte is an American hub I almost exclusively fly American now and the credit card has earned me so many miles and perks for things I was already going to spend money on. My only regret is not signing up earlier!
