It can feel difficult to know where to look for cheap airfares, which is why I love flight deal sites: they bring the cheap fares to you!
Here’s a quick rundown on how you can use flight deal sites to find the best airfare deals.
WHAT’S A FLIGHT DEAL SITE?
Flight deal sites locate the best fares available today and share them through web or social posts, or private newsletters. Flight deal sites are different than travel search engines because they only highlight only what’s hottest today, from any location.
Many sites return a handful of deals per day, but they may or may not include flights departing from airports local to you. (Remember, they’re highlighting only the cheapest fares.) Flight deal sites are a perfect match for people who have some flexibility about when to travel or open minds about where they’ll travel next.
They’re also suited for people who can book fares quickly after finding them, because the fares reported on flight deal sites are often “error fares” that the airlines quickly adjust once they realize they’re undercharging for the fare.
Even if you don’t have amazing travel flexibility, it’s worth it to sign up for flight deal alerts – sometimes you luck out with a cheap fare to your planned destination.
WHY ARE THE FARES ON FLIGHT DEAL SITES SO LOW?
Sometimes fares are low because the airlines are running a sale, and sometimes they’re also low because of an undesirable layover, a long flight time, or an unusually short layover which will leave you hustling to get to your next flight.
I just scored a ticket from New York to Cairo for $260, which is an astonishingly low fare for that route. The catch? There’s a 12 hour layover in Serbia on the way there. I love a day-long layover because it’s a chance to experience someplace new. I’ll spend the day exploring Belgrade, and hop back on my second flight!
I got an incredibly cheap fare to Belize last year with a day-long stop in Mexico City, and enjoyed some delicious tacos, chilled in a park, and enjoyed the National Museum of Anthropology before hopping on my flight home.
Flight deal sites also frequently list error fares, which are fares that are mistakenly priced too low by the airlines due to human or computer error.
The most common error fare is when airlines forget to add the price of fuel to the ticket. If you look at the itemized breakdown of your ticket costs, you’ll see that the seat price itself is only a small fraction of the total ticket cost. Sometimes airlines accidentally leave off a key line item, and when they do, the airfare is listed at an unusually cheap price.
HOW DOES BUYING THESE FARES WORK?
Flight deal sites often show deals which come from online travel agencies (OTAs). Online travel agencies buy and resell tickets and you know many of them by name: Expedia, Trip.com, CheapTickets.com, Hotwire. In general, I prefer to buy tickets directly from the airlines themselves (going to Delta.com and making my purchase, for example), because it’s often easier to make changes to tickets or deal with any issues that arise with the airline that.
But in the case of error fares, sometimes buying from the airline is not possible, because they are not offering the super low fare that the online travel agency is.
Before you book, read the OTA’s terms and conditions carefully before booking. If everything looks good, purchase the ticket immediately.
After you hit that buy button, you should immediately get an email confirming your purchase. This is a notification that the OTA is in the process of booking your ticket. It is NOT verification that you have a valid ticket.
Somewhere between a few minutes and a few hours later, you will get a second email letting you know that your ticket has been issued. This email will include a six-character confirmation code that looks like “PWZRK” or similar. This six-character code is confirmation that your flight has been booked with the airline, and that you have a real, valid ticket for your trip.
Once you get that six-character code, go directly to the airline’s site and find the “My Flights” or “My Trips” section. It will prompt you to enter your confirmation code and surname, and when you do so, your tickets should appear. Verify that everything looks correct. Congrats, you’ve just scored a super cheap, legitimate airfare!
IS THERE ANYTHING I SHOULD BE CAUTIOUS ABOUT?
As mentioned above, it’s important to make sure that you have a valid ticket issued by the airline before you book accommodations, tours, or any other part of your travel plan.
Most of the time, airlines will honor error fares, but every once in awhile, they will refuse to honor them and refund everyone instead. Hawaiian Airlines once famously sold a huge number of round trip tickets to Maui for $11.20 per person due to a computer glitch, and instead of honoring the dare, they refunded everyone who bought tickets.
I usually wait 24-48 hours after my ticket has been issued to book my hotels and tours, just to be sure that the airline isn’t going to refund my ticket. Again, it’s very uncommon for them to do this, but not unheard of, so I err on the side of caution.
Before you buy the ticket, you want to make sure you understand the terms: how many bags are included? What is the cancellation or refund policy (these are usually inflexible with OTA purchases, so make sure you’re booking a ticket you can commit to!) Is the layover enough time to clear customs in the country you’re flying though? If it’s a long layover, will you be able to leave the airport without a visa?
WHICH FLIGHT DEAL SITES ARE THE BEST?
My go-to flight deal site is The Flight Deal. I find their fares very reliable, and they’re selective about what they post. If they’ve listed it, it’s a good deal.
Secret Flying often lists the absolute cheapest deals, but sometimes they list deals that no one wants. (If it takes 39 hours on budget airlines and four flights to get to my destination, it doesn’t matter how low the price is, I don’t want to fly it!)
Scott’s Cheap Flights, AirFareWatchdog and Travel Pirates are also excellent flight deal sites. Click around and see what you like best (or just sign up for newsletters from all of them!)
WHAT’S THE BEST WAY TO MAKE SURE I DON’T MISS ANY DEALS?
The deals go fast, so I have a little system set up to help me catch deals as they’re listed.
On Facebook, I follow all of my favorite flight deal sites, and I’ve selected “See First” from the “Following” dropdown on their page. Every time you open Facebook, you’ll see the most recently posted flight deals at the top of your feed. Some hub cities have their own special pages (The NYC Flight Deal page is here) so I also post those to the top of my feed using the same method.
You can also follow your favorite flight deal sites on Twitter, if you use it more frequently than Facebook. Most filght deal sites tweet fares as soon as they’ve found them.
I also recommend signing up for each site’s daily email that returns the cheapest fares for the last 24 hours, since that’ll alert you to any fares you might’ve missed on your social media. You can also just scan the fares on the sites themselves.
When I had a day job, checking the cheap fare sites was the highlight of my day – I checked them every afternoon part of my lunchtime routine, and I sometimes checked them on my commute home from work as well. I couldn’t travel very much when I had an office job, but seeing so many affordable fares kept my passion for travel alive.
I hope this guide to finding cheap fares on flight deal sites helps you score a great deal… if you get a good fare, shout it out below!
