We all know that it can be quite exasperating to score a flight at a reasonable price because airline pricing seems like a black box of mysteries which is impossible to solve. When is the best time to fly? When is the best time to book your flight?
Being an eager follower of airline industry and a consumer counsel for over a decade, I have got some true strategies which I have also experienced to score flights at reasonable cost. Some of them are easy to carry out while some of them take some extra time and work but by working a bit smarter you can score a flight at a reasonable price.
Let’s get started!
- Choose The Cheapest Dates
Till the early 90’s, scoring the cheapest flight always includes a stayover of Saturday night and the reason behind that is the airline would charge a bit much higher fare for business travelers.
Business travelers always tend to fly during the working days of the week and be home on the weekend and leisure travelers typically stay away for a full weekend, and during that time airlines would try to lure them with cheaper and reasonable flights.
In this day and age, airlines price their tickets virgorously. In simple words they can closely track and supply demand, and changing the pricing in a split – second based on what’s going on. For instance your favorite sports team make it into the super bowl, airfares to get to the big game would have already increased before you could even turn off the TV.
Now most of the people must be thinking that how do you get around this dynamic pricing? Simply look for those day that have lower travel demand. Generally, Tuesday, Wednesday and Saturdays are those days in which you can score flights at reasonable cost and Monday, Thursday Friday, and Sundays are often priced higher, because price follows demand.
By choosing a “7 day” or a flexible day view in the price search engine you can test out this theory.
Time of the day matters too in case if you are willing to take a red eye, or the first or the last flight of the day, then you can get a better price.
- Turn Your Attention To The Experts
There are thousands of consumer and travel experts out there who spend their days keeping the record of travel deals and you see some of them on the TV all the time. Some of them also write columns in different newspapers and some of them are avid travel bloggers.
Either you are looking for cheap hotels, rental cars or a low airfare, when it comes to tracking deals, these counsels are always on the ball.
You can find these experts on their blogs, or on newspapers or you can also find them on their social media page. You can take a start by following few of them and then keep tracking their areas of coverage and accuracy before choosing your favorite expert or two from all of them.
- Purchase Tickets In Advance
Another way to score a reasonable flight is purchasing tickets in advance but only if they are purchased at the right time. To get more known with that you should take a look on one of the most definitive studies on when to book is an airfare study from Cheapoair.com.
According to the study it says that the best time to book a plane ticket could range from 47 – 90 days from the date of departure, and it depends on the season in which you are flying and your destination. Every year cheapoair conducts this study, so you can check it once in a while to get known with the latest information.
- Consider Close By Airports
If you got some luck on your side and you are living in a metropolitan area with two or three airports around you together then you can take advantage of those adjacent airports around you.
Such as in NYC you can fly in and out of JFK, Newark Liberty or LaGuardia, and in the San Francisco Bay area you can pick from San Francisco, San Jose and Oakland. These are just a few examples but it makes one thing clear that by driving a few miles away out of your way could cause you to score a cheaper flight significantly.
- Utilize Frequent Flyer Miles
Miles & point thrive. For that you will need to sign up for an airline frequent flyer program which is totally for free but by this way you can earn miles through hotel loyalty programs and also through credit cards.
All alone in the way the bonuses of credit card sign – up can net you tens and thousands of miles. But make sure you that you only charge what you can pay off immediately.
Travel credit cards have higher interest rates than the average ones, so in case if you run a balance on a regular basis then you can easily pay more than the points bonuses are worth.
At the I would only say that there are many ways through which you guys can score a cheap and reasonable flight successfully, but at the same time be aware of bad advices along the way.
So guys this were the list of the 5 ways to score a flight at a reasonable cost and other than that we have also shared our experiences with you guys. So take a step today and start scoring some reasonable flight for yourself and save some extra cash.
Also we would love to hear from you guys that which one of the above mentioned ways you’ve tried and how did it helped you guys out. So simply drop a comment below and let us know about your experiences.
Good luck and have nice day!
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