That feeling when you find a cheap flight can be truly mindblowing; plenty of people have visited Europe with tickets that just cost a few pounds. There’s nothing better than flying for hundreds of miles, knowing that your ticket’s cost you less than the average rail journey.
However, what happens when prices rise seasonally, and you’re not willing to pay extortionate rates to travel? We spoke to Momondo about the best ways to find a cheap flight.
Book at least 53 days in advance. By analysing 12.6 billion airfares worldwide on 100 of the most-searched routes, Momondo found that by booking travel just under two months in advance of departure could save consumers up to 26% on flight costs.
You don’t need us to tell you this, but tickets are generally most expensive on the day of departure - there are no last-minute bargains. You’ll discover this massively-helpful lesson if you’re unlucky enough to miss your flight.
If you hate flying at night, you may need to steel your nerves in order to enjoy a saving; evening departures between the hours of 6pm and 12am typically offer the cheapest fares. Understandably, it’s more expensive to fly in the morning and midday, before 3pm.
Tuesday is, typically, the cheapest day to fly. Saturday is the most expensive day. However, this isn’t representative of all flights, and there are ways of finding out the cheapest days to fly for your particular trip. Your best strategy is hop on a flight comparison site, input your departure and arrival cities, and select “one-way” (even if you’re planning on returning). Then, when entering your departure date, select the whole month so you can see which date is cheapest.
Clear your browser search history regularly if you’re shopping around for flights. Why? If you think that a flight price has changed after searching it a few times in your web browser, you may be right. Based on the cookies in your browser, flight prices do increase when you repeatedly search for the same terms, as the site wants to scare you into booking the flight quickly before prices get even higher. Always search for flights in incognito or private browsing mode.
