Who doesn’t want to score cheap flights, and save a lot of money?

How fun it may sound, traveling does cost us a lot of money. And especially for the budget-conscious travelers, it’s very important to be able to optimize your budget, in order to finance the whole trip.

Flight ticket usually eats up a big chunk of your travel budget, especially if you’re planning to travel to a long-haul destination. So this is certainly a main cost item where you want to find some significant savings.

In fact, it’s totally possible to do so. Here is how you can do it!

How to save lots of money when booking your flights?

#1 – Book via Online Travel Agencies (OTA)

Instead of booking your ticket on the airline’s website, try to book it on Online Travel Agencies (OTAs). Sometimes OTAs have significantly cheaper fare than the airline itself. But how do you find the OTAs that have the cheapest fare? The best way is to use aggregators, like Expedia or Kayak. These aggregators scan the fares offered by thousands of OTAs on the web and compare them for you.

#2- Book during promotion periods

Airlines launch multiple promotions during a year. During these promotion periods, sometimes they offer really insanely cheap fares, like the €600 Business Class ticket to Tokyo I booked last year. I would suggest subscribing to email newsletters of all of those airlines you are interested to fly with, so you will get a timely notification when they launch a promotion.

#3 – Fly from- and/or to nearby cities

If you don’t mind flying from other departure cities than your hometown, this can be the best way for you to generate a lot of savings. Let me give you an example. Suppose you want to fly from New York JFK to San Francisco (SFO) on May 11 and back on May 18. The cheapest fare that you can get is €227. But if you fly from LaGuardia (LGA), the fare can get as low as €213. Or, instead of flying to San Francisco, you can also consider flying to smaller nearby cities like Oakland (OAK). Sometimes by avoiding major airports like San Francisco, you can save a lot of money on your ticket fare.

#4 – Book with airline miles/points

Do you still have some unused miles that are just sitting on your frequent flyer account? You can use them to book your award ticket (an award ticket is a ticket that is purchased with miles). And don’t worry if you don’t have enough miles to book a ticket to your destination. Many airlines offer you to purchase amount of miles, so you can use it to book an award ticket. Sometimes booking an award ticket using purchased miles can be cheaper than purchasing a regular revenue ticket.

So that is how you can save hundreds of dollars when booking your flights! If you like this post and find it helpful, please subscribe to my latest updates. Also please don’t hesitate to leave a comment below. See you in the next blog post, and until we Greet!