For many people, booking a flight is a tiresome topic, but it is simply a part of travelling. Or at least it is for almost all travelers, especially if you want to travel further away. I used to love flying, the excitement, the anticipation and somehow I found the hustle and bustle at the airport really exciting. Today I am a bit jaded and find flying more of a must than an exciting experience.

We try to travel by other means of transport than by plane where ever possible and within a feasible time frame. Especially since you get a lot more of the country around you from the train or the bus and of course you get in contact with a lot more people. Whereby we already made very exciting acquaintances in the airplane.

Nevertheless, flying is still a fixed component of our travels and because it takes time and nerves to find the right flight, we try to summarize our top tips on the topic of booking flights here.

 

What is the best flight for you?

And here comes the first, but if possible the biggest question. Many simply want the cheapest flight possible. Yes, we would also like to fly cheap, but if I’m travelling for a 4 hours flight over 18 hours and have to change three times, it’s worth a few extra francs for me personally to be able to travel in peace. But that’s something everyone has to decide for themselves.

 

Take your time

A simple tip, which is not taken into account enough; the best (and possibly cheapest) flight is not booked as a last minute bargain in 5 minutes. On the contrary, it can be quite expensive. We have missed to book a flight before we went to a small, not yet so developed island and had to take an overpriced last minute ticket at the airport. Or once we booked a cheap ticket for a flight less than 12 hours later but unfortunately one month too late for the right day. Well, there are always unforeseen events, but if possible take a few weeks time, especially for the expensive long distance flights. With many search engines you have the possibility to set a price alarm and thus to track the prices over a longer period of time.

Search engines

Who does not know them, the innumerable search machines in the Internet, which promise the most favorable flights.

Our most visited search engines are:

• Skyscanner
  Skyscanner is super flexible. You don’t have to specify a fixed airport, it is enough if you specify a country as departure and/or destination. You can also view the monthly overview and quickly see which day is the cheapest to travel.
• Momondo and Swoodo
  These two belong together for me because they find exactly the same flights for you. What’s great about Momondo is that you are quickly informed about additional fees in addition to the ticket price.
• Trivago
• Google Flight & Matrix Airfare Search
  You cannot book flights with these two gadgets from Google. But they can help you a lot with your flight search. They give you a good overview of which airlines fly to your desired destination and at what time intervals they fly. Matrix Airfare is not (yet) used very often, but it will be interesting for you if you want to book an upgrade with your miles. Google Flight shows you the average prices over the month, which airlines allow how much luggage, delays, technical equipment etc.

Not every search engine lists every airline. Therefore it makes sense to search on several search engines in parallel. If you like a flight, it can be useful to ask the airline directly. Usually the price from the search engines is cheaper, but asking doesn’t cost anything and we have already saved money because we booked directly with an airline. It can also help to find cheaper flights if you search through the country domain of your destination country and/or search on a search engine of your destination country.

As an example on the left, a selection for a flight from Zurich to Tanzania and back (found via Skyscanner).

We assume that we want to leave at the beginning of August and come back to Zurich at the end of August. In order to fully enjoy the vacation, we would like to fly there on 03.08. and back on 31.08. This would be possible at a total price of 1’557 CHF for two adults (779 CHF per person).

With the help of Google Flights I now have two graphically very clear possibilities to find out if the flight I found at Skyscanner is really the cheapest option.

Thanks to the colors in the graphic I can quickly see that departures on 08.08. are the cheapest. Best combined with a return flight on 23.08. or 26.08. With this basis I can now search and compare a flight around this data at the search engines.

In the graph on the right I see that the flights tend to become cheaper towards the end of August, beginning of September. If I’m flexible now, it would be a possibility to postpone my vacation for a few weeks and save money when booking a flight.

Weekday & Time

In the best case you are flexible with your departure date and time. Flying during the week is usually cheaper than on weekends and before holidays the prices are often horrendously high as many people travel to their family. As a counterbalance to this, many airlines offer bargains after New Year to bridge the January slump and attract new customers. If you have known for a long time that you want to fly to Cape Town in summer, you might be lucky and find a bargain in the January slump.
The time of your flight is also reflected in the price. A flight very early in the morning or very late in the evening is usually cheaper than the same flight during the day.
Most search engines of course have this on their screens and therefore offer a monthly overview with prices or a flexible date selection. The best for us are Skyscanner and Google Flights. But as soon as you have got an overview of when you fly the cheapest, you can continue your search on the other search portals.

The time of day when you book your flight also plays a role. Most people work during the day and have time in the evening to look for a flight for the next vacation. The demand is usually higher in the evening and therefore the flights are more expensive than e.g. in the morning at 9.00 am. Also on the weekend the demand is usually higher, because then people have more time to research.

 

Newsletter of the biggest airlines

As already written above, there are always discounts for flights. So if you are a frequent flyer, it is worth to subscribe to the newsletter of the biggest airlines, you might be lucky and get exactly your desired flight through such a promotion. However, I would set your mailbox filter so that the emails of the airlines go directly into a separate folder, otherwise your inbox will overflow.

 

Airportselection

We in Switzerland have the great advantage that all major airports are easily and, above all, quickly accessible. That means we can find out (unfortunately only by trial and error) if it is cheaper to fly from another airport.
But sometimes it can be worthwhile elsewhere. In big cities there are sometimes several airports or you can fly to the neighboring city and take the train to your final destination. Of course, only if time and train ticket costs are reasonable.

Budget airlines

There are thousands of budget airlines, but not all of them are registered with the major search engines, so they are not automatically on your radar.
Pick out the budget airlines and check the flights there. Especially for short distances you can save a lot.
Here are a few budget airlines by continent:

• Europa
  EasyJet, Eurowings, Ryan Air, Wizz Air, LEVEL, Norwegian
• Asien
  Air Asia, Jetstar, Scoot, Asiana
• U.S.A
  JetBlue, Spirit, Frontier, Porter, Southmest, Allegiant Air
• Canada
  Air Transat, Swoop, West Jet, Air Canada Rouge
• Afrika
  Kuala, Mango, FastJet
  
• Südamerika
  Spirit, Interjet, Volaris, Viva Aerobus

 

Open jaw flights, one-way combinations and hidden cities

Open jaw flights are flights where you don’t fly back from the same airport where you arrived. They can be cheaper if you book from flights, for example Switzerland – Bangkok – Chiang Mai – Hanoi – Switzerland. You will most likely get even cheaper if you book all flights separately and not together. But you have to be careful that you always plan enough time between flights so that you don’t miss your connecting flight.

Hidden cities are inbetween stops that are actually your desired destination. For example, if you want to go to Orlando, but the direct flight is very expensive at the moment, a flight to Miami with a change in Orlando might be cheaper. Nobody forces you to get back on a plane at Orlando airport!
The disadvantage, however, is that you always have to travel with hand baggage, since the baggage is often loaded directly onto the plane or even sent directly.

Device & anonymous surfing

The rumor that a Mac user will be shown more expensive prices is persistent. So far we have never found a one to one example to support this. But we always search on Appel and Windows devices and whoever finds the best flight also books.
Another point is to save your data when searching on the search engines. If you search for weeks for the same curse, the search engines will save your data. They know that you want to fly from A to B at a certain time. So it is also worthwhile to search anonymously. Almost every browser has this function built in.
But the most important point is to use a VPN (Virtual Private Network). Often domestic flights are more convenient if you book in the country where you want to fly. So if you want to book a domestic flight in Thailand from home and pretend to be in Thailand with a VPN, the flight will be cheaper.

Direct booking / travel agencies

Here in Europe we have made the experience that booking flights through a travel agency is always more expensive than if you make the effort yourself. It is somehow clear, the people in the whole travel agencies want to earn money. Nevertheless, you should always get at least one comparison price from a travel agency for more expensive long-haul flights. Sometimes especially larger agencies have special offers that you can’t find on the internet.
The situation is completely different in Asia. Here we often finally got the better prices for the same flights, which we already picked out in the Internet, in the travel agency.
Apart from the fact that our European credit cards are not accepted on all Asian websites. So it is worthwhile to find out how the price range looks like.

 

 

Additional tip: Get your in-flight meal faster with the right choice of food

We got this tip from a real frequent flyer. On long-haul flights, meals are usually included with (almost) all airlines. Some even have a whole menu card. On almost all of them, however, you can indicate when booking if you have any special wishes. For example, if you have gluten intolerance, eat Halal or are vegetarian like us. But it is also worthwhile to choose a special menu if you don’t have any special wishes. The special menus are usually distributed before all other food. That means you don’t have to wait with a rumbling stomach for food scent, but get your food first. This is especially worthwhile if you are sitting in the back of the plane.