Navigating the Web for Cheap Flight Deals
There’s plenty of Youtube videos scattered over virtual lands, but most are confusing or overly complicated. These are the easy tools I use to help me find cheap flights.
Refreshing browser history. When you start looking for flights it’s important to delete your browsing history after every single search. Otherwise, companies track your history and increase the price of a flight immediately after so you wonder why the cost was affected so quickly. In your panic you end up booking the next cheapest flight because you think all the prices will start going up. No. This is simply the internet following your moves and rebounding them with increased costs. Refresh your page and relax, patience will eventually be rewarded.
2. Look for mistake fares. Essentially ridiculously cheap flights that are the result of human error, miscalculations of fuel surcharges or currency conversions gone wrong. They are unpredictable so searching for them often is crucial is you’re looking for a particular destination to pop up. If you’re flexible and spontaneous, this will save you thousands of dollars (who wouldn’t want to travel to Dubai for $300 roundtrip?).
A few noteworthy ones:
Chris Myden YYZ deals: only for those traveling from the Toronto Pearson airport. From round trip flights across Canada, to Hawaii, India, Iceland etc. The results are as endless as unpredictable. Chris also offers direct instructions when you do find a flight so it’s easily obtainable.
Airfare Watchdog: one of the more popular choices. Neatly organized website that allows you to set up alerts by city, track airline deals, read information about using travel credit cards and so on.
Secret Flying: search for flights you’re interested in or browse through the Latest Deals / Trending categories. Not limited to any airport for departure and with a wide range of cheap flights shown.
Ultimately, the more you follow these sites, the better chance you'll find a deal for a country you're
looking to travel to.
3. Hipmunk / Kayak. Both are travel meta search engines that keeps track of multiple searches for flights and hotels, along with other nifty features.
4. Skiplagged. Also a search engine but one that focuses on exposing hidden-city ticketing trips in addition to what Kayak may show you. This means steep discounts on airfare because you’re basically booking a flight past your destination, with your target destination as a stop on route.
5. Hopper. A website / app that tells you what the cheapest dates are to fly. Bonus → no ads or popups and it does a bit of the searching for you. (Though still not as great of a deal as looking for mistake fares.)
