If you’re traveling a relatively short distance, and don’t mind the drive – getting to your destination by car is a no-fuss way to travel. Some trips are just too far away or separated by water in such a way that flying is the most practical way to go.
Dig deep and grab your credit card and if money is no object, move on to planning the rest of your trip, right? For most of us, finding cheap airfare tickets are a necessity. Paying less for a ticket frees up money for other parts of your trip. Even if you are well off, over paying for things is probably not a great way to stay well off over the long haul.
There are plenty of advanced strategies for finding deeply discounted airfare but these are what we consider basic strategies – available to almost everyone and allow you to find lower cost tickets to where you want to go on your next vacation. If you’re a more experienced traveler, these may seem fairly elementary but I promise that all our advanced strategies build on these basic building blocks.
Step One – Search an Aggregator Travel App or Website to Find the “Normal Airfare” to your Destination for the dates you need. Rather than searching individual airline websites like American, United, or Delta; a site like Expedia, Kayak, or Google Flights will give you airfares on most of the major airlines to your destination for the dates you choose. There are bells and whistles that each one has, we’re not going to book anything yet, but for now focus on whatever one you like best for your first pass at things.
These aren’t foolproof since you may not see airfares from Southwest listed, but it gives you a great starting point to judge whether any of the alternatives listed below represent a better (or worse) deal for you.
Generally speaking, you’re trading convenience, travel time and amenities for a cheap airfare tickets and only you can decide whether this is an acceptable trade-off.
Are you flexible on dates? Use the ‘Calendar Search’ feature. Some people need to plan their vacation a year in advance to request time off and the idea of shifting your departure from Saturday to Tuesday won’t work. On the other hand, we regularly see 20-30% swings in airfare for same basic dates depending on when you leave and return. In this theoretical trip to Aruba in the screenshot above, the ticket cost ranges from $319 to $693 per person in coach depending on the dates you plan to travel. Using the calendar feature will show you the lowest airfares for the month you’re traveling in and give you some perspective on whether a particular fare you’re looking at is great, so-so or no-go. As a general rule, traveling on Tuesday or Wednesday means fewer people flying and better deals overall. Want to leave Friday after work or on school break week? That’s fine, just be prepared for higher fares because that’s when everyone else wants to fly too.
Peak/Off Peak Seasons at Your Destination – Okay, so nobody wants to have their vacation cut short by a hurricane in the Caribbean or travel to Phoenix when it’s 118 degrees outside. That said, most destinations have peak seasons for travel and off seasons where there are deals to be found. Our preference is for what’s called the ‘Shoulder Season’ in places we’re planning to travel. The weather is still good, the crowds have died down a bit but you can still have a great time for a lot less money. Heading to Europe between late May and late August tends to be a very expensive time since many families are looking to travel during summer break. Late October to mid-March on the other hand tends to provide a lot of great off-peak airfare deals to Europe if you have the flexibility to travel during that time. The shoulder season with moderate deals would be early to mid-May or early September after kids are back in school and families are generally staying home.
Explore alternate airports. Some bigger cities have multiple airports to depart from or arrive to – think New York City: you could potentially fly from JFK, LaGuardia, Newark, White Plains, Stewart or Islip. The reality is that where in the metro you live may impact where you’re willing to travel to, but by searching all the alternate airports, you can decide whether it’s worth the extra effort to travel to an alternative airport. Even if you’re not in a big metro, airfares can be high at smaller airports. For instance in our hometown of Rochester, New York the airfare to travel to Chicago a month out is about $249 a ticket on American Airlines. If we travel to Buffalo (about an hour and 15 minutes for us), we can fly that same itinerary for $93 a ticket. If it were only a small savings, we’d probably go with the convenience of leaving from our home airport. But in this case, that’s $300 in our pocket to do more once we get there. Buffalo here we come!
Connecting Service vs. Non-Stop. It seems counter intuitive and costs airlines more to provide it to us, but taking two flights on your way to a destination usually costs less than non-stop service. The reason, is that airlines charge more for convenience and a non-stop flight is shorter, takes less time and is generally more convenient. If travel time is really not a concern, you can see some connecting or even double connecting itineraries that bring your price down considerably.
Look at Redeye Flights – a Redeye is simply a flight that departs later at night and (sometimes) arrives early in the morning at your destination. If you don’t sleep well on planes, you may arrive with, “red eyes” hence the name. These can be fairly common on certain overseas flights and sometimes available for domestic flights as well. Sometimes in return for a less convenient flight time, you may find that the airfare is offered at a discount to more popular flight times, especially on domestic redeye flights.
A few years ago we traveled from Niagara Falls to Fort Lauderdale on a Spirit Airlines flight that left at 1:30 am and arrived around 4:45 am. Not really convenient, but wow was the price great – $17 each way! Speaking of convenience, if you’re arriving late at most airports you’ll find that many of the shops and services available during the day are closed. On the flip side, there is often less traffic getting there, an easier time parking and fewer people in the security lines. So you take the good with the bad on red-eye flights.
Consider Your Vacation “Genre” and Work Backward to a Specific Destination – If you start with a specific destination and dates – e.g. “I want to go the the Sandals Resort in Jamaica on the last week of December,” you’re unlikely to find the best deals. A better way to start might be “I want to take a one week vacation in a sun and sand destination in the Caribbean.” That opens you up to dozens of potential places to travel at a variety of different airfares. By way of example, here are some fares to the Caribbean from Boston for a random week at the end of March:
- Aruba – $289
- Barbados – $454
- Dominica – $770
- Grand Cayman Island – $442
- Montego Bay, Jamaica – $297
- San Juan, PR – $149
- St. Kitts & Nevis $565
- St. Thomas, USVI – $123
So if you haven’t been to any of these places and what you’re looking for is some warm weather and sunshine , there’s a pretty wide swath of destinations that might fit your vacation “genre” at a lot of different price points. Focus your efforts on destinations where the deals are. Starting from a place of spending less getting there means you can splurge a little on the type of room, activities or dining you do once you arrive.
Frequent Flyer Programs – These have been around since the early 1980’s and you may assume that if you don’t travel frequently for work, that they can’t really help get you where you want to go. While that may have been the case in the early days, for the past decade or more, frequent flyer programs have evolved into multi-faceted programs that allow you to earn points or miles for a whole variety of activities, from applying for particular credit cards, shopping at a range of retailers, dining out at particular restaurants, and the list goes on and on. We focus on helping people earn the right points because they all aren’t created equally.
Maximizing FF Programs is a discipline unto itself that we’ll tackle elsewhere. Suffice it to say that you should be participating in the major programs and if you have a little bit of lead time to correctly plan it, you can take a very nice vacation that uses points rather than dollars from your bank account.
Case in point, we got back about a month ago from a trip to South America that cost us almost nothing in airfare (just the taxes) for a week-long trip with our boys. We had amazing dinners out, connected with history and culture, snowboarded on sand dunes, and saw sea lions on a powerboat boat ride. The main reason we could do all of that for a family of five was because it didn’t cost us an arm and a leg to get there. It’s easy if you know how and we’ll help show you the ropes.
