5 Steps to Booking a Cheap Flight Online

Booking a flight can be one of the most stressful parts of travel. Airfare is expensive and, with an ever-changing variation in prices, we often worry that if we buy right now, prices could drop and we’d be the person who paid the most money for the flight.

“Maybe if I wait just a little longer, it’ll be cheaper,” we say to ourselves.

I used to be that person. I’d spend hours upon hours searching for the right price on multiple websites, second-guessing myself, and worrying about what happens when the prices drop. I would hold off on buying, waiting for that perfect moment. It was like trying to time the market — and it simply doesn’t work. 99 times out of 100, you lose.

Because you can’t predict prices. The best day to book is usually today.

A while back, I went to visit the folks at Google Flights. Over lunch, they told me about a study they did on thousands of flights. They found that the average drop price is about $50 USD. That means if you wait, you could save about $50 USD. Just as likely (if not more so) is getting stuck with a price that is hundreds higher. (This excludes sales and mistake fares.)

As someone who doesn’t go a day without searching for airfare to regions all over the world, I can tell you that you can’t second-guess yourself. If you’re comfortable with the price you paid, you need to accept it and move on — even if airfare drops.

Today, I want to show you how to put that into practice and walk you through how I book my tickets.

 

Step 1: Search for Deals

First, I’ll look at deal websites like Going, Holiday Pirates, or The Flight Deal to see if there are any fare sales going on. Sometimes there are, most of the time there aren’t. (You can read my review of Going here to see how they work.)

If I find an awesome deal, great! The search is over and I can go on with my day. If not, I continue to the next step.
 

Step 2: Search Main Routes

Next, I start with the ITA Matrix, an amazing tool that allows for complex searching and that every flight junkie I know uses. While it only searches major airlines (no budget carriers here), it has a calendar option so you can see prices over the course of the month, providing you with a solid baseline on prices.

Being flexible with your dates is key to booking cheap airfare, so getting an overview of an entire month is important. In fact, being flexible with your destination can yield even cheaper fares. If you aren’t set on somewhere in particular, use the “everywhere” option in flight search engines like Skyscanner or Google Flights and see what you can find.

But for the purposes of this article, I’m going to use concrete destinations. Let’s look at an example route from New York to Barcelona:

You can see at a glance that the cheapest flight for this route is $404 USD. But click through to choose your dates and booking options, and you’ll get the full picture:

As you can see, the cheapest round-trip flight is indeed $404 USD. It’s a TAP Portugal flight from Newark with a layover in Lisbon. But, for just $457 USD round-trip, you can fly direct with United, a much better flight overall (see the flight circled in red in the screenshot above).

Next, I go to Skyscanner to compare prices and see if there are any budget carriers flying the route I need.

New York to Barcelona on Skyscanner:

As you can see, Skyscanner brought up the similar results, with a slightly cheaper option for the TAP Air flight. While the price differential isn’t huge, you can see that Skyscanner brings up different flights and results (ITA Matrix didn’t find the Lufthansa direct flight), making it worth checking.
 

 

Step 3: Search for Regional Fares

Next, I visit Google Flights to search regional fares. For example, if I’m flying to Barcelona, I’ll see what flights to nearby airports might be cheaper. It may be cheaper to fly into London, a major hub, and take a budget airline to Barcelona.

Though you’ll end up booking two different tickets on two different airlines, you can sometimes save hundreds of dollars. I once booked a flight to Dublin and then flew Ryanair to Paris, saving me $200 USD instead of taking a direct flight.

In Europe, there are plenty of options for doing this, since there are a lot of airports and budget carriers to choose from.

If you aren’t a junkie like me and know which budget airlines fly where, visit the airport’s website to get a list of airlines.

Or, simply put your departure airport into Google Flights and a larger region as the arrival airport. In this case, you can put in “Europe,” which will bring up a map view of the cheapest flights from New York to anywhere in Europe:

I see that it is in fact a bit cheaper to fly into London ($356 USD), one of the cheapest options for getting from New York to Europe. However, that doesn’t include any bags. Once I adjust filters to include one carry on bag (I assume everyone will need at least a carry on), I see that flights are $401, just a few dollars cheaper than flying to Barcelona on one ticket.

I stop my search here in this case. If it was significantly cheaper, I would look into whether it would make sense to buy two separate tickets to save money.

Remember to factor in immigration, checking into a new airline, possible delays, and your time. It’s not worth adding another stopover just to save a few bucks.

Though I have used this method to save money in the past, in this case, booking two separate flights isn’t worth it so I move on.

Even if the savings seems pretty decent, you’ll still want to watch out for budget airlines’ notorious fees, because they could negate any possible savings. These airlines usually charge fees for checked bags, carry-on luggage, printing your boarding pass, using a credit card, and anything else they can get away with. Be sure to add up the cost of the ticket AND the fees to make sure that the price is lower than a larger carrier. (Plus, another stopover might mean more money spent on food at the airport too, cutting into your savings.)

I usually only use this method if it will save me more than $150 USD, and if there are at least three hours between connections. Since you’re booking two separate tickets, if there are delays on your first leg that cause you to miss your second flight, the airline isn’t responsible for rebooking you. And generally, travel insurance won’t help you if your layover is less than three hours. So always give yourself enough time.
 

Step 4: Search Airlines’ Websites Directly

After looking at these three websites, I’ll visit the airlines’ websites to see if there are any cheaper deals to be found. In order to encourage consumers to book directly with them, airlines often have cheaper prices listed on their websites.

In this flight example, the airlines’ websites were offering the same or more expensive fares, as you can see with this United flight (that ITA Matrix found for $457):

This isn’t always the case though, and sometimes you can find cheaper fares when booking directly. A quick search of airline websites will ensure that you’ve exhausted all your options.

 

Step 5: Book Your Flight!

After booking the flight, I make a note to check back in 23 hours as you have 24 hours to cancel a flight without penalty. Right before that time is up, I’ll do a quick search to see if the price dropped. I’ll either rebook or keep my flight based on what I find.

After that, I don’t give it a second thought, even if two weeks later there’s a sale or I see cheaper prices pop up somewhere. You can’t know the future or when a sale will come. You can only make your best decision with the information at hand at the very moment you’re booking.

Maybe you’ll spend 10 hours searching to find some obscure website that is $5 USD cheaper. Maybe your flight will become $200 USD cheaper the next day (it probably won’t though). Maybe there will be a sale. Maybe the price will go up!

In the end, it is not worth worrying about.

First, you’ll be frozen with potential buyer’s remorse if you worry about future prices. You’ll never buy a flight because you’ll always be wondering “what if?” In the end, you’ll wait too long — and probably pay more.

Second, how much is your time worth? Maybe I could search more, but I’d rather use those extra hours to enjoy life, plan a trip, work on my blog, or relax at the beach. My time is more valuable than a slight drop in price will ever be.

If you’re spending more than an hour booking a flight, you’re spending too much time. This entire process from start to finish took me 40 minutes. After that, I went back to watching Narcos on Netflix. I never second-guess myself on flights. You’ll go crazy if you do. Spend 30–40 minutes finding a cheap flight at a price you’re OK paying, book it, and move on with your life. You’ve got a trip to plan, after all!