Travel Insider | How to book the cheapest air tickets | Part 1

We all know that feeling. You need a holiday, want to skip the 9 to 5 grind, or just need a different view for a while. You don’t want to pay the jackpot though, so you spend hours and days behind your laptop to find a cheap air ticket, as you don’t want to get ripped off and you don’t want to sit next to your neighbour telling you he paid a couple of hundreds bucks less than you did for the same flight. Sounds familiar?

So, How do I book my cheap air tickets?

We all know looking for cheap air tickets can be tiresome, annoying, boring, time-consuming and can drive you to that point where you just want to throw your laptop out of the window. The world of air tickets is overwhelming. Believe me, I know as no other, as I booked thousands of flights for my clients when I was working a travel consultant and still book many flights for ourselves, friends and family.

Some people wonder how I always find the best deal when I tell them that I booked another cheap air ticket. Like that ticket from Düsseldorf to Barcelona for just 25 Euro. Yes that was a return. And yes, the train from Zwolle ( place in the Netherlands where I am from ) to Amsterdam, or the parking cost and fuel to drive up to the airport was more expensive than the air ticket.

Or that time when I scored a bargain when we flew from Darwin to Singapore under $100 and from Darwin to Bali for around $50. Or Brisbane – Amsterdam with 3 persons for $2200 return.

I can truly say that I am pretty sure that we never pay too much for our  air tickets. Yes, it takes a bit of time, but with the right tools, tips and tricks you can take off much further for your bucks.

Here are my travel insider tips to score the cheapest Air Tickets online

1. Use the best flight search engines

We all know the big guys like Skyscanner and Momondo, which we very much like. But we recently found another new air ticket search engine who offers amazingly cheap air tickets.

Ladies and Gentleman, let us introduce you to Traveloka Malaysia

We found them when we were looking at our tickets for our Bali trip next year, and fell in love with them straight away.

Traveloka does not only offer cheap air tickets, but also good hotel deals. They offer amazingly good air ticket and hotel deals and great promo offers. Traveloka specialises in Asian destinations. They have the most competitive prices for air tickets and hotels in Asia, no hidden fees ( don’t we all hate that?! ) and they also include budget airlines like Air Asia and Lion Air.

2. Choose a different airport

Look for airports a bit further away from the city or country you want to go to. For example, when I was still living in the Netherlands, where Amsterdam is our main airport, I always looked at nearby airports as well. This is how I found a really cheap air ticket for only 25 euro Return from Düsseldorf to Barcelona, which would have cost me much more than when I would fly from Amsterdam with a different airline. And in my case, driving to Düsseldorf or Amsterdam didn’t make much of a difference, as I lived close to Germany anyway.

3. Look for the cheapest day to fly

It is always a bit of a puzzle, but from my experience, most of the time it is cheaper to fly on weekdays than on weekends. Monday and Tuesday I found often the best day to score a cheap air ticket.

The cheapest months are in general May, September, October and November. December is a no go if you don’t have to travel in this month, as with the holiday period and christmas and new years celebrations going on, it seems like the whole world is flying home or goes on a trip and air ticket prizes are sky rocketing. We paid two times more when we were flying from Australia to the Netherlands in December, than when we flew in September.

4. Be flexible with your travel dates and destination

Okay, not everyone can be that flexible when booking a cheap air ticket, but it you are not stuck on certain holiday periods or specific dates, it can safe you a lot of money.

I found flights sometimes up to 400$ dollar cheaper when I just looked for a day or few days earlier or later than your preferred travel dates. The more flexibility you have, the better.

If you have a certain budget and are not very particular on the destination, search for all destinations and see what destinations have great deals on the dates you want to travel

5. Look for air ticket on times you normally want to be in bed

Many times I found that flying on times, that ‘normal’ people just want to lay in bed, can get you a great deal. Personally, we prefer night flights since we are travelling with Sem, as he is a great sleeper on  airplanes, and we rather have him sleeping during his normal night ritme, then keeping him entertained for 10 hours on a plane.

Business people and many others always prefer to fly on ‘normal ‘ times between 9 and 5 ( of course! 😉 ) and those flights are often more expensive than the flights with the shitty times.

6. Use flight points when possible

We are frequent flyers with Emirates and Qantas, and as we fly quite a few miles on a yearly basis, those points can add up fast.

Make sure you sign up with the frequent flyer program at your preferred airline, or all of them if you are flying regular with different airlines.

We also have our Flybuys and Woolies point cards where we safe point when just buying our groceries and other general stuff. With many shops participating here in Australia, we safe a lot of  points, which we can convert to frequent flyer points.

Also, our bank is partnered with Qantas, so every dollar we spend and pay with our bank or creditcard we get extra Qantas frequent flyer points as well.

⊗ I will write an article about frequent flyer point hacking in the future as well. Sign up here to get updates about our latest articles and never miss any of our new stories ⊗

Read How to book the Cheapest Air tickets part 2 here

Do you have any tips on how to book the cheapest air ticket? Let us know in the comments below ↓

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