8 Tips for Booking Cheap Flights

Who’s ready to take that trip? There are some great resources and tips that can give you a leg up on travel deals and booking cheap flights!  People are traveling more and more as countries re-open to tourism. Here are 8 tips and resources I use to find great fares. Where are you headed? (Need an idea? How about our 5 night culinary vacation to Mexico! Now booking for July 8-13, 2021)

8 Tips for booking cheap flights

1. Subscribe or follow accounts that look up great flight prices for you. Scotts Cheap Flights and Secretflying.com are two of them. Make sure you don’t have their emails filtered into your spam folder.
2. Sign up for email alerts for your fare. You can usually do this once you set up your initial search in whatever search engine you use.
3. Book in incognito mode.  This is key to ensuring that the site’s cookies aren’t used against you to raise the fare when you go back to look at the flight after your initial search. Here are instructions for how to access incognito mode in Chrome.
4. If you see a good rate and can get cheap tickets, grab them! Booking cheap flights is sometimes about just going for it.
5. Typically airlines have better rates on Tuesdays but not always. Sign up for those alerts!
6. Book at whatever fare level allows you to change your flight without any penalties. Be sure to check in the fine print. (I don’t always do this, and lately airlines have had very flexible rebooking policies, so check their rules before clicking “purchase”).
7. Accrue and use points! Follow the points guy for the best tips. I use a Chase Visa card with United since I travel with them a lot. 
8. Enjoy your trip! Once you book, it’s time to plan! Headed to Mexico or Cuba? Check out our blog posts for some ideas of things to do.