How to buy airline tickets profitably?

The key to a good and enjoyable trip is thorough preparation. You should pay attention to everything. It is very important to make the final decision on where to go, look at the weather forecast, pack a suitcase, make a plan and pack a first aid kit.

But if you want to conquer the mountains or surf on the ocean, you still need to get there. And to do that, of course, you have to buy airplane tickets.

It’s a challenge every time. Either there are no tickets for the desired dates, or the flight is too expensive. And sometimes the situation can be even more dramatic: there are no direct flights to the desired destination.

Let’s find out how to approach the search in the right way.

experienced traveler

Tells about how to buy air tickets profitably.

– Does it make sense to look for tickets only on the Internet?

– I have always looked for tickets through the two biggest search engines – Skyscanner and Aviasales. The metasearch engines do a great job of finding the cheapest options. Aviasales works better with flights within Russia, Skyscanner – abroad. But it’s better to check both anyway.

– Are there “time” tricks when it’s best to look at tickets?

– The logic of airline pricing defies me. There are annual sales, and it’s best to find out about specific dates through newsletters or social media groups. In general, it is better to look at tickets a month or a month and a half or two in advance, provided that there is a clear understanding of the departure dates and an interesting destination.

You can sign up for a newsletter from a ticket aggregator for specific dates, it will send a notification when the price drops. Set the destination and departure time, set the size of the desired discount or maximum price – the robot will send an email. Convenient so you don’t have to monitor and waste time unnecessarily.

– Can I find discount vouchers or promo codes online?

– There are discount promo codes, especially during airline sales. But often the dates are inconvenient, and the people are flocking to these discounts. It’s rare to get anything good. You have to be quick.

– How else can you save money on flights?

– As soon as you have a chance to buy cheap tickets, it’s best not to hesitate. It all depends on time flexibility and desire. A direct flight from point A to point B is not always the cheapest. If you want to go to Italy and you have a cheap ticket to Budapest, it may be more profitable to fly through it.

There are a lot of low-cost carriers flying around Europe, you can easily and cheaply travel within the EU countries, for example. If you are interested in Asia – also. Complex routes are often more interesting and cheaper.

– Are bonus programs from frequent flights really useful?

– Of course. If you buy tickets directly through the airline’s website, it is better to register there, if they have a bonus program. It will not be superfluous. Bonuses in the same Aeroflot are a good thing.

– What can I do to make searching for tickets easier?

– Subscribe to resources that do most of the work for the traveler who wants to travel cheap. All we’ll have to do is monitor the news and tailor our vacations to the tickets we buy.

If you don’t have specific dates and destinations, but just want to fly somewhere cheaper, Skyscanner has a cool thing called Explore. You set point A, point B – Everywhere. And it gives you all possible cheap options to anywhere.

Lifehacks to make air travel cheaper

• Use VPN and incognito mode – aggregators are trained to collect data about you and gradually the price of tickets will increase. In the case of a VPN, the aggregator will show you the starting price.
• Try looking at tickets to a neighboring city to your destination. It happens that tickets to the nearest cities are cheaper, and the transfer will not take much effort and money.

• The ruble exchange rate affects prices – if the currency is falling, it is better to buy after Wednesday, and if it is growing – before Wednesday. The whole point is that on Tuesday night to Wednesday night the internal rate of IATA (International Air Transport Association) is updated, according to which ticket prices are calculated
• If the exact date is not important, you can use the price calendar on the aggregators’ website. The graph clearly shows the low-priced tickets.