Oftentimes, to travel or not to travel equates to booking a flight. As a travel-enthusiast, I am always getting ready for my trip. While I (of course) LOVE traveling abroad, I went to college out-of-state. This meant many flights to and from Texas to California and all around the United States for Spring Break. Needless to say, I’ve learned a few tricks along the way!
Tips for Best Flights
1. Clear browser cookies, cache, and history and browse in Incognito or Private mode.
Airlines TOTALLY take advantage of your past viewing history. It’s sewn into their algorithm. If you’ve ever come back to old searches on a normal browser, you’ve noticed prices rising with each search. This is because airlines rely on cookies revealing your past search histories to market to you. If they know you’re interested, they will try to take advantage of this.
When my sister and I were actually booking our flights to Montana, my flight was under $260. My sister’s…? JUMPED to $1000 literally 1 minute after I booked. Insert the gasping emoji
We cleared the histories and cookies and it was back to the 200’s. Phew, right?
2. If you’re going to book a flight on the weekend, book it on a Sunday NOT Saturday.
Avoid booking a flight on a Saturday. For many reasons, this is the weekend day people most often book a flight. And because airlines know this, the prices might be typically higher.
3. Never book a flight on a Monday or book a flight to depart on a Monday! The best days to book a flight are on a Tuesday or Thursday.
This coincides with the work weeks and working hours. Most work weeks begin on Mondays. Mondays are business days for many companies, meaning if there are last minute flights, companies will book a flight on a Monday.
4. The better days to depart are during the week: Tuesdays or Thursdays.
I’m not sure why Tuesdays and Thursdays seem to be the cheapest day to depart but they are! I’ve booked a flight to Napoli on a Thursday for less than $700. My flight to London was $348.
While in London, we flew to Dublin on a Tuesday and returned on a Thursday for about $30/person.
5. For best flights, look on Skyscanner or Google Flights to see best return dates.
I love both of these but I often find myself using Google flights A LOT. I love it for round trips because you can plug in prospective departure dates and see the prices for return dates in a calendar format.
6. The optimal window to book is either 2-3 months out OR last-minute within 2 weeks of your departure date.
For optimal prices, the window for purchasing flights seems to be about 2-3 months ahead of your flight or within the last 2 weeks. I booked my ticket to Napoli about 2 months out and found amazing deals. Too far ahead, flights were in around $900. By the time I booked, they were about $730 with taxes and fees. When you book last minute, you catch airline trying to fill seats.
Related: Tips to Having the Best Travels and Best Adventures
I’d love to hear your tips and tricks for finding the best flights! Feel free to share if you have any other nuggets of information! Happy traveling!
