It’s definitely true that flights have gotten more expensive since the pandemic, especially for those of us captive to a single dominant airline (ahem). If you’ve got your heart set on a flight to a specific destination on a specific date, you’ll pay about 25% more than you would have in 2019. That said, if you’re a little flexible around dates and destinations, there are still awesome deals to be had. Letting a cheap flight guide your travel planning can make a trip even more fun, and reduces some of the loss aversion that can impact a “dream trip”. There are great tools for doing cheap flight hunting on your own, but there are also plenty of services which can help.
Cheap Flight Newsletters
I’ve discovered most of my best deals via cheap flight newsletters. These trigger that part of your brain which says “I’d basically be losing money by not booking this,” which always leads to smart decisions. The more useful of these usually let you specify a home airport (or a few airports) so you’ll only get deals that actually apply to you.
Now, you might be thinking “gosh, my life is really busy, I can’t just drop everything and hop on a flight tomorrow!” In reality, these deals are rarely that spontaneous. You’ll get a mix of relatively near-term (within the next six weeks or so) and much further out – often nearly a full year.
Flight deals tend to be short-lived, which has a couple implications. First, the sooner you find out about a deal, the more likely it is to be available. And second, you need to be ready to book quickly. To address the former, many of the cheap flight newsletters have some sort of “premium” (paid) service which gets early access to the best deals. And to address the latter, be ready to book a flight before you’ve sorted out things like a hotel or other plans. And, if you’ve got a (long-suffering) travel partner, be ready to convince them of why this is a good idea when they get surprise ticket confirmation emails.
Personally, I pay for the premium newsletter from (Minnesota based!) Thrifty Traveler. It runs about $45 per year, and I generally get two to three emails a day with deals. Some recent deals include flights to Italy and Spain for the fall and winter (through early 2025) for under $500. That’s quite a bargain – easily half the price of a peak season flight. They usually find deals that have a wide range of dates – many of the deals now are for dates from September through Christmas.
Other popular services include Going, Jack’s Flight Club, and Matt’s Flights. They’re all broadly the same, so I wouldn’t worry too much about picking the “best” service.
Do It Yourself
Finding cheap flights yourself is easy, once you learn a few features of a flight search tool. Many online travel agent (OTA) sites (Expedia, Kayak, etc) have cheap flight searches built in. I like to have a little more control, so I tend to use Google Flights.
Start by setting your home airport. If you happen to live within a reasonable distance of some smaller airports, and you’re willing to make some connections, include those as well. It’s dumb, but occasionally you’ll find a cheap route which leaves from a nearby airport and connects in your home airport. You might think “can’t I just skip that first flight?” but of course, airlines aren’t rational like that.
You can also consider some split ticket options. For example, I know that there are usually cheap flights available from Minneapolis to O’Hare, so I’ll sometimes look for cheap flights originating from O’Hare. If I find one, I can always book a separate flight from MSP to OHR (or drive). The only risk here is that if your first flight gets rescheduled or delayed, you won’t get much help from the airlines with rebooking. Nowadays, with free rebooking, that’s usually less of an issue.
After you’ve set your departure airports, you need to pick your destination. With Google Flights, you can leave the destination blank and get an “anywhere” search, but you’ll need to wade through cheap flights to Orlando and Las Vegas. Google Flights supports lots of other entries in the destination field – it doesn’t need to be just a city. Try a region (“South Asia”) or a country (“Italy”). Remember that you don’t have to stay where you land either! For example, if your heart is set on Vietnam, but you can only find cheap flights to Thailand, book a separate (and very cheap) flight between the two. The expensive part is leaving the US – flights within any given region are rarely more than a couple hundred dollars.
Next, you’ll need to set your dates. Google Flights gives you a few options. You can use the “Flexible Dates” tab to specify a duration (one week, two weeks) and a rough time frame (a few month span). If you do have a specific destination in mind, there are a few other tools you can use – the price graph helps you identify less expensive departure dates for a given duration, and the dates grid can show you when a slightly shorter or longer trip can save you money.
You can combine all of these tools with the standard Google Flights filters. For example, I usually start my searches with only Skyteam airlines listed, because I’d rather earn towards status on Delta if possible. Out of Minneapolis, our cheap flights often involve Air Canada, but I generally avoid flying with them so I uncheck them in the list.
The general rules of travel hold true – you’re not going to find amazing cheap flights to Europe in August, because everyone is flying to Europe in August. And some destinations are never cheap, owing to expensive arrival taxes and fees, which set the floor for a flight. But if you keep an ear out, there are still plenty of ways to travel without breaking the bank.