How to buy the cheapest airplane ticket

Look for tickets through meta-searches

Ironically, until now few people understand the difference between the price of a ticket in a meta-search engine and, say, an agency or an airline. And it is quite substantial. For example, the agency receives prices from airlines and / or reservation systems, adds something from above and sells it to you. Markets each market participant puts, as he likes.

Agencies sell a lot of tickets for airlines and their conditions are often even more pleasant than those of the carriers themselves. Therefore, buying on the airline's website as the source of the price, it makes sense not always.

The metapoiskovik also deals with the fact that it receives data from all (agencies, airlines and booking systems), compares them and produces results with links to sources.

So, one of the most popular metasearching tools - Aviasales - is looking for and finding the cheapest air tickets in 728 airlines, 200 booking offices and 5 reservation systems. By default, the search results in the first place is the cheapest offer.

Well, to clearly see the "spread" in prices between agencies, here, for example, the search results for the query "Moscow-Rome" at an arbitrarily chosen date. The price for the same flight in different agencies differs by more than 10%.

Buy tickets in both directions

The most common ticket on the route in both directions is cheaper than if you buy separately for the date of departure and the date of return. It happens that the flight to both sides is even cheaper than one.

Use the Low Price Calendar

A convenient and very popular feature for Aviasales . It helps, knowing the right direction, very quickly to find the dates with the most attractive prices. If the direction is not known, then you can leave the default phrase "Any country" in the search form and click "Show prices" - the system will give out the cheapest offer from the available in the database.

In addition, there is:

• The point of departure or arrival can be set as a city or country
• You can specify the duration of the trip
• You can mark as specific dates of the trip, and set the search immediately by month

Learn about price changes first

I manage to fly mega-cheap, also because I know for sure the dates when the airlines on their favorite destinations conduct sales. So, for example, for many years I signed up for Greek Aegean Airlines, and during this time a whole history of the dates of their shares was formed. By the way, the terms of their holding from year to year almost do not change.

But to monitor low prices for the right directions can be simpler. To do this, Aviasales has a subscription to change the price. Simply enter information about your intended journey, and the system will notify you as soon as the ticket price changes.

Install a mobile application [important!]

Keep track of the best prices even more convenient when you have a mobile application from Aviasales . By the way, according to the search engine it is installed on every 8th smartphone in Russia. And if it still does not have you, then, perhaps, this is the reason why all cheap air tickets "fly by" past.

But there is another trick , which most of them do not even know of the active users of the application. To find the best price, after installing the application, try searching in the desired direction. While the system is searching, click "Add to Favorites".

After that, you will receive notifications on the phone along the route you need each time the price changes. Thus, you will be among the first to know about a new sale, and you will be able to redeem the ticket cheaper.

Use the low-cost airline ticket card

The search for a map is well suited if you can flexibly approach the planning of your trip and are not particularly attached to dates or places. This useful feature is also available from Aviasales .

With its help you can in a few seconds understand where you can fly cheaply and quickly. In this case, there are a number of filters to facilitate the search:

• City of departure
• Budget
• Visa or visa-free travel
• Travel Dates
• Etc.

If you have not tried to look for low prices on the map before, try to do it right now .

Plan your trip well in advance

On flights very often the rule: the earlier you bought a ticket, the cheaper it will cost you. If your planning horizon is less than a month before departure, be prepared for the fact that your ticket will cost more. The best prices are easiest to find a few months before the trip .

In addition to the low-cost calendar , Aviasales has many airlines. For example, here is a similar calendar of Greek Aegean Airlines. According to air carriers, you can also navigate well ahead.

In addition, during the sales period many airlines even more cheapen tickets for flights, which are more than 3 months. And if you follow only certain dates of flight , then such a "ball" can pass you by.

When tracking the price of the route, proceed as follows:

• Having received a notice of a sharp decrease in prices in the right direction, I go to the airline's website and check its low-cost calendar
• I find the best offer
• I return to Aviasales and check tickets for the same dates (usually through Aviasales tickets are cheaper)
• I buy the cheapest ticket for a plane "for nuts."

Use low costers

Another way to fly cheap is to actively use the low-costers. In recent years, many flights have appeared from Russia and Ukraine, which can be cheaply flown to Europe: some of them are presented on Aviasales , others are not.

Keep all the low-costers in your head (especially on foreign routes) is an impossible task, and to list them here is ungrateful. Lowcosters come and go, and the information must be up-to-date. The good news is that there is a search engine specializing specifically on low- costers - Azair .

The appearance of Azair leaves much to be desired, but it provides a fairly good list of budget carriers.

Just in case, we recall that when traveling by budget carriers, in addition to the pluses, there are some disadvantages: baggage restrictions, less convenient flight schedules, and often second-rate airports. But if the main task is to buy the cheapest ticket for a plane, then, as they say, a gift horse does not look into the teeth.

Travel light

Previously, this was a trend only among the loukosterov, but in recent years, more and more common in traditional airlines: separate fares for traveling light and with luggage. In the first case it is understood that the traveler gets on an airplane exclusively with hand luggage and can use a lower tariff.

Of course, if at the last moment a "baggage-free" person has a bag with him, then the airline will win back.

Be aware of all promotions

We have already mentioned above that prices for certain directions can be monitored and learned about their changes first. This is exactly the way that I fly often and cheaply. This works great if you know exactly where you want to fly.

But you can go further and at any time "in one fell swoop" check all the current stocks. At least those of them that are in the database Aviasales . This is well suited for spontaneous travel, when you want to fly off cheaper, and where - depends on the availability of offers.

Regularly updated information about special offers is available at this link . And the hottest of them are presented below:

Check nearby dates and cities

And you knew that the cheapest tickets usually come in between Tuesday and Thursday, while at the beginning and end of the week, on the contrary, flights usually cost more. Therefore, when doing a search, it always makes sense to check the neighboring dates. The difference can be very significant. Below is an example of the screenshot of the first flight from the Aviasales calendar .

Another fichek is to look not only at the "native" city of departure, but also the neighboring ones: the difference in the price of a ticket can justify buying a ticket for a train to get to a cheaper departure point. For example, on average, tickets from Moscow are cheaper than from St. Petersburg, although it's easy to get from one city to another.

Similarly, Ukrainians are not always profitable to plan a flight from the capital: from Kharkov and the Dnieper, it can often be much cheaper to fly to Turkey, and from the airports of Western Ukraine - to Poland.

Save up to 30% on compound (complex) routes

This is a very powerful topic for savings, or, conversely, to make your trip much richer, and this function is also in Aviasales . But with it you need to understand a little.

Option A: Buy a flight cheaper

You probably noticed that a flight with a transfer is often cheaper than a direct one. And this can be very cool to save. Moreover, saving 30% is not even a rarity. In order to understand "how" - let's do it by example.

For example, we need to get from Moscow to Paris. The date is chosen randomly (in our case on October 15, 2016). We enter the data, as usual, on the Aviasales main page and get this result - a direct flight of Air France will cost 322 Euro.

Now, we'll figure out where to fly from Paris, very often. In my case came to Barcelona.

We switch to the "Create a complex route" tab and enter 2 flights for the same date: Moscow-Paris and Paris-Barcelona. It turns out that we seem to fly from Moscow to Barcelona with a transfer in Paris.

A few seconds for the system to search and result: From Moscow to Barcelona via Paris by the same Air France - 238 Euro.

But we do not need to go to Barcelona. We were originally interested only in Paris, where we will get off at the time of the transplant.

On an equal place, they saved almost 30%, and we fly in the same plane as other passengers who bought tickets more expensive. And the flight for us is the most that there is no direct.

Important

If you fly this way, register your luggage not to the final destination, but to the place of transplantation. In our case - for the flight Moscow-Paris-Barcelona - this is Paris. Otherwise you will leave, and the luggage will fly further. For this, at the front desk you will need an excuse why your luggage needs to be taken out of the plane in Paris, although your tickets to Barcelona. For example, you are carrying a transfer or in a bag the thing you need - yes yes it is not enough.

Remember that if you missed a segment in the flight, then the return ticket is canceled. In our case, if you bought tickets Moscow-Paris-Barcelona and Barcelona-Paris-Moscow, but left in Paris, then back on this ticket you will not fly away, because to Barcelona initially did not fly. In order not to be embarrassed - just buy tickets separately, as if in one direction.

Option B: Look more for the same money

With the option of a difficult route, you can go even further and expand your journey by seeing more for the same money. For example, we need to get from Moscow to Rome, but we also want to visit Paris.

By analogy with the method described above, we find tickets with a transfer in Paris. Only now we have another task - to spend a free day in the French capital. You can do this by playing with the time of departure and transfer.

For a few minutes of searching I got such a route: fly early in the morning from Moscow, in order to get to Rome in the evening, but spend the whole day in Paris. Without additional costs and the need for a hotel, since there is a lot of time, but there is no overnight stay.

Finally

All the methods mentioned in the article are checked and work to find and buy the cheapest airplane ticket. Add it to your bookmarks and save with these little tricks on the next trip, or try to check the mentioned ways right now - on fresh tracks.

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