Flying, whether for business or pleasure, can be a fraught experience. That exciting or anxiety-inducing experience begins with the process of buying your ticket. Do you search endless websites looking for the lowest fares? Do you wonder if you’re getting the same deal as the person sitting next to you on the plane?
Here are a few tips that will help you save money on your plane ticket.
Go incognito
Surprisingly, the price of a flight may change just based on the number of times you search for it. This happens because your web browser stores cookies when you visit travel sites and search for tickets to a certain destination. The more often you search, the higher the price goes. In order to avoid this peril, open an incognito window (in Chrome) or a private browsing window (Firefox, Safari or Explorer) and do your searches from there.
Try multiple search engines
Different search engines will provide different prices for the same flight. You can use a service like Kayak that will supposedly compare all the offerings from other search engines, but we’ve found that Kayak’s plane ticket fare offerings come with numerous popups. If you are willing to deal with that, you may have good luck with Kayak.
Different days can result in different fares
While there’s no consistent truth about which days are the cheapest to fly, we’ve found that buying tickets for departure and return dates of Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday are cheapest. To give yourself the most options of plane ticket fares, use the search engine option that gives you the prices for a few days around your preferred departure date.
Different airports can result in different fares, too
In cities where there are two or more airports, you may find it’s cheaper to fly into one than the other. For example, if you’re flying into New York City, check prices for flights into JFK, LaGuardia, and Newark. Don’t forget to compare the cost of getting to your final destination, though; if Newark is the cheapest airport to fly into but you need to take a taxi from there to Manhattan, you may end up ultimately spending more than you save.
Don’t wait to book
Some say that it’s cheaper to wait until six weeks or so before your flight because it’ll be cheaper to buy your ticket then. But plane ticket prices rarely get cheaper as the date gets closer. If you know where you’re going and when, just buy your ticket far ahead of time if you possibly can.
Do you have any other tips for buying plane tickets? Please share them in the comments!