Practical Tips for Availing Cheap Air Tickets

People have to fly every now and then. They search for the right flights, airlines and fares. In this respect, the online medium proves very useful as a number of websites of airlines and agencies can be searched for finding the most appropriate flights. The search and booking engines featured on these websites allow users to find the cheap air tickets for their one-way or round trip journeys.

Some of the most practical tips for booking flights cheap are given below:

1. Advance Reservations

If you can book tickets in advance, the fares have got to be less than when you later. Generally, booking about a month in advance is considered best for the purpose of availing cheap flights. Advance reservations is considered to be a better bet than the last minute deals for low cost fares.

2. Flexible Travel Dates

You may not be able to find the lowest fares of a month on the date you are planning to travel. These might be available on some other day and can make a significant difference to the savings. Therefore, it pays to have flexible dates of travel whenever possible.

3. Flexible Travel Times

Another important factor is of travel time. For same departure and arrival stations, there could be flights during different times of the day. Generally, flights during the night time are cheaper than morning time. The red-eye flight, as these are popularly called, shall also be a travel option if getting cheap air tickets is the objective. However, night time flights could be the peak period flights for some destinations. Therefore, you shall consider flying on the non-peak time flights which are less expensive.

4. Flexibility in Choice of Airlines

You might prefer flying with a particular carrier than the other. This can also cause you to miss out on cheap flight tickets provided by that other carrier. Generally, the less popular airlines have cheaper rates to offer. So, if you could widen your choice of airlines and are willing to fly on those airlines which might not be popular, you can bag cheap air tickets.

5. Flexibility in Choice of Airports

Many cities around the world are served by more than one airport. While the secondary airport is located some distance away from the city center and you might have to take on-road transportations of a longer duration, you can still consider flying to that airport if the price of airtickets is low and offsets the addition cost of road transportation.

6. Flexibility in Choice of Connections

When flying international, there are good chances that you might have to take connecting flights. The intermediate connections can make a lot of difference to the price of air tickets. Therefore, if you can select a connection which increases time of travel to final destination, there are good chances that the flight could be cheap. Sometimes, the airlines also offer reduced airfares if passengers select a particular connecting city as a layover for certain period of time. This is done to promote tourism to that city. This can also be considered for low airfares with additional benefit of seeing the city.

7. Look for Deals

Deals can be offered by the flight booking agencies or airlines from time to time and in different ways. You shall keep checking for these deals on the websites, in email inboxes, social media platforms and other web resources. Coupons websites, fare comparison websites, own websites of airlines or agencies, other bargain sites and social networking platforms such as Facebook and Twitter to name a few are some of the examples of web resources where deals can be found.

8. Using Frequent Flyer Points

If you are a frequent flyer member of an airline, just check for the upgrades and award flights of the airline where you can make use of your loyalty reward points. These points are accumulated in different ways to be able to be redeemed for flights or cabin class upgrades. Since these are used in lieu of using the cash or credit for buying ticket, these help a lot in saving money.

9. Using Mobile Application

Do check whether any airline or agency is offering discounts for using its mobile application for ticket booking. These companies generally offer incentives for using these applications. Most often these incentives are by way of cash rewards or reduced fares on tickets. These can be used for reducing the airfares.

10. Calling the Ticket Agent

While online medium can be used for ticket booking on your own, calling a ticketing agent can land you exclusive deals. There are unpublished fares and are available with agents which can be provided on phone. If you do not call the agent for knowing the fares for your travel, then you could be losing out on the low cost air ticket prices.

11. Subscribe to Email Newsletters and Set Up Alerts

Subscribing to the newsletters is one of the ways to know the latest updates and deals ahead of others by having these in inboxes. The newsletters have to be from agencies or airlines or even from deals websites.