‘Where is the cheapest place to book flights?’ is one of the most common questions asked in travel forums. But there’s much more to bagging an affordable flight than the website you use to do it. We asked Jack Sheldon of Jack’s Flight Club, a free members’ club made up of flight-hacking experts, how to book cheap flights. These are his top tips.

1. KNOW HOW TO START THE SEARCH

Kick off the hunt for affordable plane fares on Google Flights. This is the tool our experts use the most while in the early stages of looking for cheap tickets. There are two main ways to use this search engine:If you’ve not yet set dates for your trip, use the price calendar tool. Enter a destination and adjust the length of your trip. Then scroll through month by month: Google displays the best price for each day, and highlights the absolute cheapest options in green.Alternatively, Google Flights’ map feature is ideal for those who have fixed dates but no set destination. For example, say you want to make the most of the late May bank holiday by planning a long weekend. Enter your dates and the most convenient airport to fly out of, then search for a region rather than a specific destination. If you were after some early summer sunshine, entering ‘southern Europe’ would display a list of destinations in that region, and the price of a flight to each place on your chosen dates – allowing quick and easy price comparison.

2. COMPARE AND CONTRAST

Google Flights displays prices offered directly by the airlines themselves. While these prices are getting better all the time, there are still some carriers that don’t yet appear, especially smaller regional airlines. Therefore, I always recommend checking at least one other website to compare prices once you’ve narrowed down travel dates and destination. I suggest cross-referencing with online travel agent (OTA) price aggregators such as Skyscanner and Momondo, which will sometimes include additional carriers that aren’t shown on Google Flights.

3. NAIL YOUR TIMING

Flight prices fluctuate all the time, and it’s not uncommon to see prices for a route change multiple times in a single day. If you’ve ever kept an eye on flights over a few weeks, you’ll have seen fares go up and down – often with price differences of up to 50 per cent between the highest and lowest fares.Scoring a good price on a flight is all about knowing the absolute cheapest price for your route and pulling the trigger at the right time. This is not always an easy task and can be time consuming, but there are some tools to help.Set up fare alerts on Google Flights if you’ve already got specific dates and a destination in mind. Google checks the price of the flight once a day and will alert you by email when the price has changed. After a few weeks, you should be able to get an idea of a high and low price for your dates. Simply book the next time it falls to snag the savings.If you’re out for a good deal to any destination on your must-visit list, sign up for cheap-flight alerts from your home airport using fare-alert newsletters such as Jack’s Flight Club.

4. KNOW THE CHEAPEST AND MOST EXPENSIVE SEASONS TO TRAVEL...

Avoid peak travel-season dates, such as school holidays and bank holidays, and you’ll generally find both flights and accommodation much more affordable.

These are the most expensive times to travel:

Mid-July to August

Mid-December to early January

Early – mid-April

The cheapest months to travel are:

November to early December

Late January to March

5. … AND REMEMBER THE CHEAPEST DAYS TO TRAVEL

Generally the cheapest days to fly are Monday to Wednesday. These are followed closely by Sunday and Thursday. Fridays and Saturdays are almost always the most expensive travel days.

6. CHOOSE WHERE TO BOOK

As mentioned above, the website you use to book is much less important than when, but it does still matter. If you’re arranging a short-haul holiday, we recommend finding the best dates on Google Flights and booking directly with the airline, as it’s unlikely that you’ll find a cheaper ticket elsewhere.

7. TAKE ADVANTAGE OF NEW ROUTES

One of the best ways to score a cheap flight – and enjoy a destination before the masses descend – is to look out for the launch of new routes. It normally takes at least a year for an airline to generate substantial awareness of a new flight path. In that first year, there will be frequent price drops and lower fares in order to drive ticket sales and raise the route’s profile.Recent examples from the UK include Vietnam Airlines’ new route to Bali, which was priced at £415 (average prices sit around the £650 mark); Wizz Air’s new route to St Petersburg (priced as low as £30 return) and British Airways’ new direct route to Osaka, Japan (offered at £475 return – previously, tickets would rarely go below £700).

8. LOOK OUT FOR LAST-MINUTE CHARTER AIRLINE AVAILABILITY

It’s well known that last-minute deals are a thing of the past – no longer can you show up to the airport and get a cheap flight to paradise. But there is one exception to this rule – charter airlines. These are airlines that don’t usually sell individual flight tickets – they’re often operated by holiday companies that bank on filling up the planes with package-holiday customers.

When there’s leftover capacity, these companies will often sell flight-only tickets at a vast discount, with most flights going on sale between one and three weeks before the flight.In the UK, Tui lowers prices on charter flights more than any other airline, and actually has a specific page on its website where you can see its lowest-priced flights. These are nearly always last-minute deals, but they can be priced at half of what you’d pay with another carrier.

9. TAKE ADVANTAGE OF OPEN-JAW FLIGHTS TO SAVE TIME AND MONEY

If you’re keen to maximise your holiday, look out for open-jaw and multi-stop routes. Flying into one city and out of another, open-jaw routes can often save you both time and money – especially if you’re planning to travel around while you’re away. For example, if you’d like to visit San Diego and drive through California, you’ll quickly notice that return flights to San Diego can be quite expensive. Flights to San Francisco, a bigger transport hub, are often much more competitively priced. Instead of booking a return trip to San Diego, consider booking an open-jaw trip into San Diego and departing from San Francisco. Your overall fare will work out cheaper and you’ll save time by not having to retrace your path to catch your flight home.

10. TURN A STOPOVER INTO A TWO-IN-ONE HOLIDAY AND SEE TWO DESTINATIONS FOR THE PRICE OF ONE FLIGHT

When flying long-haul, most major carriers will stop at their national hub for a layover. With Turkish Airlines there’s normally a stop in Istanbul, Air France will stop in Paris, KLM in Amsterdam, and so on. Many of these flagship carriers are also incentivised by their host country to drive local tourism by setting their fare rules so that it's easy to extend a stopover from a few hours to a few days.

Simply take a standard return flight search and change it into a multi-city search. While flying from Manchester to Sydney with Singapore Airlines, for example, extending a stopover in Singapore to two nights won’t increase the total cost of the flights – meaning you’ve just added a city break to your holiday Down Under at no extra cost.

Original post found on CNTRAVELLER

How to Book Cheap Flights