Hack Your Flight Ticket — Part I

Udipta Basumatari

In the past couple of years, I have traveled to 15 countries and over 40 destinations. The thrill of travelling starts way before hopping on the flight. It starts from the moment I try to dig out the most inexpensive way to reach my destination.

Flight search engines like Kayak and Skyscanner have been useful as a starting point but they don’t always give the best option. Also, all the articles about booking a certain number of days in advance are next to worthless in my opinion. They have certainly never consistently worked for me, or at least for all the flights I have taken out of Singapore.

So what can an average traveler do to nail the best ticket every single time? I don’t think there is one single solution for this problem, but a combination of the different tricks can definitely help.

I. Start with a search engine. Obvious one. If you love travelling, you must have come across all the rave reviews Google Flights has been receiving in recent times. I have used it a few times so far and it has already replaced Kayak and Skyscanner as my preferred tool. Apart from all the usual features that other search engines provide, the coolest feature hands down is the map view.

Edit: I just came across the map view on skypicker.com but haven’t used it enough to include it here. At first glance, it appears to be more robust and responsive than Google Maps. Plus, it has some cool tools like search by radius selection. More on that in part 2.

Lets say you want to decide between South Korea and Japan for a vacation in August. By using the map view, not only can you find out which destination is cheaper to fly into from Singapore, but also that Seoul and Tokyo are not necessarily the cheapest ways to access these nations. I would save quite a bit if I fly into Busan or Fukuoka for South Korea or Japan respectively. There is a high probability that I would have overlooked those cities in my search using other search methods.

I know Skyscanner has a similar option where you can search an entire country or the entire world. But after trying it out multiple times, I found that it does not always give the results immediately, which is frustrating. For example, while searching for destinations inside Japan, Fukuoka’s rates don’t even show up at the selection page.

II. Setup a Google Now Alert. For this, you will need Google Now. If you are searching for your flight 3–4 months in advance, it makes sense to monitor the flight prices for a couple of weeks to see if it drops. To do this, after you find your desired flight on Google Flights, simply save the search.

The updates to this flight price will keep appearing on your Google Now henceforth, and you will know when it’s best to strike.

I know that other search engines have email price alerts as well but they are not as conveniently accessible as the Google Flight Card.

III. Check at least 3 more search engines. This is important especially if your departure and destination are great distances away, usually in different continents. For reasons I don’t have insights into, I have noticed that different search engines are stronger in different regions, have access to different airlines and therefore can give varying results. I have compared 4 different search engines for flights from Istanbul to Rio de Janeiro to highlight this point:

The reason between these variances is mainly because of different layover times. Depending on how much time you are willing to invest in your terminal to terminal journey, you may end up saving more than just a few dollars with this.

IV. Go beyond the search engines, open Wikipedia. This is probably the most time consuming but also the one with the highest potential for satisfaction. For whatever reasons, not all airlines maybe communicating with the search engines at the time of your search, which may result in you missing out on the best deal.

To avoid this, go to the Wikipedia page of the destination airport and head to the Airlines and destinations section. Here, you will see a list of all the departure cities which have a direct flight to this airport. Scan the list for your departing airport and check if the search engine missed out an airline.

Quite recently, I was trying to find the cheapest ticket between Seoul and Jeju. As a first step, I fired up Google Maps and this is what it suggested:

Next, I went to the Wikipedia page of Jeju International Airport, scrolled down to the Airlines and destinations section and saw that Google Flights missed out Asiana Airlines and Eastar Jet. I don’t remember which airlines I chose in the end, but that’s beside the point. Searching with Wikipedia ensures that you don’t miss out on any airline, and a potentially cheaper ticket.

Some of these methods can be time consuming I agree. But every dollar you save on your flight can be used to live in a better accommodation, buy more souvenirs and enjoy more experiences.

I know a few more tricks up my sleeve but for that, I need to write part 2. Watch this space.

Edit 1: A lot of people kept suggesting me to include common hacks like subscribing to an airline or OTA newsletter for vouchers, signing up for frequent flyer programs etc. I think those are tricks that are quite widely used anyway so I won’t be covering any of them.



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