How to Find the Cheapest Flights Possible

Everyone wants to fly for cheap, but finding discounted airline tickets can be a real chore sometimes. In years past, you would simply rely on a travel agent to do the leg work – searching through dozens of flights and options before coming to the best possible price. And you would pay a small fee for that. These days, though, flight searching is up to the individual passenger, as more and more travel agents are going online or charging much higher booking fees.

Finding a cheap flight takes a lot of patience, because you have to search through lots of listings. Most likely, to find the cheapest flight possible, you’re going to have to use several different booking websites until you come up with a price that fits your needs. Here is the best way to find the cheapest flight out there.

You’re going to need a couple of hours dedicated to searching through listings, so be sure to allot plenty of time. Make sure you are not pressed to do something else or are not agitated, because this can be a somewhat slow and frustrating process. You will obviously have a destination in mind, but bear in mind that flying directly into that destination (or even punching that destination into your booking search) is not necessarily going to yield the cheapest results. In fact, unless you’re flying somewhere with a huge hub airport, such as New York City, you probably won’t get the cheapest results. Likewise, if you live in a small city, you might have to get a short hop flight to a bigger city to get the cheaper flight.

1. Start with a simple search from your hometown to your destination and make a note of the price. You might want to compare this price between several booking sites/agents before moving on from this step.

2. Next, choose the nearest large hub airports to your hometown and destinations and try those. So, for instance, if you were searching for a flight from Oakland, California to Nice, France, you’d want to check flights from San Francisco to Paris.

3. Expand your search to other areas where you might be able to get cheap hop flights. For instance, if your final destination is somewhere in Europe, you could check flights to any number of large cities in Europe and then opt for a cheap ticket to your final destination on a budget airline.

4. Make sure you know the major hubs. Airports like New York JFK, LAX, Frankfurt, London Heathrow, Amsterdam, Houston, Atlanta, Chicago, Beijing, Sydney, Bangkok, Hong Kong and Abu Dhabi are major hubs for international airlines. When in doubt, opt to fly to one of these cities and then search for a cheap flight on a smaller budget airline to get you to your final destination.

It may take a few hours of work, and you may have to try searching on several different days to come up with the best price, but eventually you should be able to find a cheap flight that fits into your budget. Just remember: don’t be afraid to think outside the box!