3 Tips to book the cheapest flight ticket

Getting the cheapest flight ticket would mean more money to spend on other stuff during your vacation.
Recently Kayak published a survey that revealed the best time to book your air ticket for the best price, which got me very interested.

I recall that while preparing for my graduation trip (Yes, sadly I will not be qualified for student deals anymore), I spent a lot of time over a span of two months trying to get the best deal. The experience was long, repetitive and sometimes painful, but at least I could blog and share about some of the tips to get the cheapest flight ticket and feel better about this.

1. Book early

The most straightforward tip of all is to really book early. Honestly, I am not sure what algorithm or rule flight tickets are priced with. There are just too many explanations out there. But after 2 months of scouring and even to the extent of awaiting the launch of a new budget airlines (Scoot), together with my previous trip to America and within America, I realized that the ticket prices that I've seen on the very first day are often still the very best price I could get.

So here is my tip, if you are someone like me who value your time a lot, go ahead and book the ticket should the price point is somewhat in your comfortable and expected price range. You will come to appreciate that the time you save from settling the booking early would be more worthwhile than the money you could potentially save if you continue to scour for deals in the following weeks. Furthermore, in the unlucky scenario, prices go up...

So.. once you made the decision, just go ahead to book your air tickets and save yourself from all the trouble and wasted time. The best tip, is still , to book early.

2. Use flight ticket aggregators

A common knowledge when booking flight tickets is to use services like Expedia, which offers choices from different airlines so you can immediately have a sense of how much the air ticket should cost. Furthermore , there are flight ticket booking aggregators like wego which allows you to do searches at different flight booking websites and compile the options. You can be doubly sure that the deal you are getting is the best price with such websites.

One tip that I saw somewhere is to clear the cache if you see that ticket prices have suddenly gone up. Such websites and airlines could track your search history and trigger a raise in price to induce panic buying.

3. Budget airlines deals

To outsmart their competition, some budget airlines like Jetstar offer a price beat guarantee, in which they would offer a 10% cheaper price than any competitor for a similar flight. I shared some tips on this previously.

Further, unlike normal airlines, you need not pay a higher price when booking one-way flight tickets with budget airlines. From here, two opportunities to save money arises via:

• Airline options
  Scour the different budget airlines (air asia, scoot, jetstar, tiger) separately for their cheapest tickets in the period you are travelling. Just select the cheapest flight.
• Currency options
  In my last trip to Taipei, I realized that booking one-way separately in TWD currency would be slightly cheaper(~$10)  if i took the round trip option. So instead of booking round trips, no harm checking whether individual trips will amount to a cheaper flight. (Keep in mind the exchange rate is via your bank's rate)

For the poor student, budget airlines are the best business model inventions in the aviation world. If money is your top concern, the best way to fly is most often via budget air!

Hope this was useful to you
Eufass