List of major flight booking websites
Google flights Google flights is one of the best air fare search engines. Make sure you try to use it with a VPN sometimes, I have been able to save money using a VPN. I saved once USD 500 when I booked a flight form google when I used a foreign IP address.
Expedia.com “Your one-stop travel site for your dream vacation”. One of the major flight booking websites. Old, but always worth checking out.
Kayak searches hundreds of other travel sites at once to find the information you need to make the right decisions on flights, hotels & rental cars.
Momondo is a free, independent and inspirational global travel search site comparing billions of cheap flights, hotels and car hire deals.
Butgetair ,the successor of Vayama. What a pity that Vayama closed down. Slogan: “We help you find and compare 500+ airlines.”
Skyscanner Compare cheap flight prices from all major airlines and travel agents, and find the cheapest tickets to all your favorite destinations. They have a pretty good reputation but this if one site, I actually never bought a ticket from.
Dohop Formerly you were able to book decent flights there, currently they only offer Hotel and flight bundles. ” Dohop powers white label travel search engines on travel websites, specifically focusing on airline and airport white label solutions.” So they basically offer services to other websites. You might try the German Dohop.
Gotogate.com I booked some cheap flights here. They try a lot of up-selling and bundles. They might be among flight booking sites what Godaddy is among domain registrars.
Opodo Search, compare and get great deals on your air ticket thanks to our speedy search engine and large selection of cheap flights from both standard and low cost.
Faregeek, “low fares more options”.
Websites specialized in searching for low budget airlines that may not appear on other flight aggregators
AZair.com finds budget flights around Europe, Mediterranean and Asia. AZair combines low cost carriers and picks the cheapest options from multitudes of possible connections. With AZair the cheapest lowcost flights won’t hide from you anymore.
swoodoo.com Theye are a flight search engine for super cheap flights in the EU. German website only.
Kiwi Its ticket search features Kiwi.com’s “virtual interlining” concept – itineraries combined from over 750 carriers, including many that do not usually cooperate in online bookings. Kiwi is definitely different from many other flight booking sites and may find crazy itineraries. It may also allow you to book tickets that combine several flights from point to point airlines.
Special tactics and even lower airfares
Use a VPN besides the advantage for privacy, VPNs can offer lower airfares since it appears you are booking from a different country. We recommend Astrill VPN.
Use ITA Matrix ITA Matrix Google owned, excellent, but complex tool to research flights. You can not book flights on this website. If you want to book a travel itinerary from Matrix, you could try this site bookwithmatrix.com
Skip a leg. What does that mean? Skiplagging is when an air traveler buys a ticket for a flight with a layover before the final destination and departs at the layover airport. Example: when a customer wants to fly from Atlanta, Georgia, to Orlando, Florida. A direct flight might cost $250, but a flight from Atlanta to Dallas, Texas, with a layover in Orlando could be nearly half the price at $130. So the passenger boards the first flight to Orlando, but never boards the flight to Dallas. This site can help you with such travel itineraries: skiplagged.com
Warning: This strategy comes with risks!
- Never do check-in luggage when doing this.
- You can only skip the last leg. After you skipped a flight segment, your ticket becomes invalid!
- Never admit you’re skiplagging
- Never use your miles rewards info. Airlines have been known to invalidate miles accounts from people doing this.
- It has also happened that you get a “free upgrade”. A free upgrade to a direct flight. A flight to a destination where you never wanted to go in the first place. So use with caution.
Last time I did it I flew Beijing ->New Deli-> Frankfurt. Flight back I flew Frankfurt->New Deli and skipped the flight to Beijing. I had some business in India to do and then flew from an Indian City, might have been Mumbai, via a 48 h stay in Colombo Sri Lanka, back to Beijing. Did a nice vacation in Sri Lanka too for nearly 48h with a free transit visa. Next time I flew via New Deli I saw airline employees checking the tickets of the passengers departing the plane and directing them to immigration or connecting flights. I am not sure they could force you on the next plane but keep in mind the Airlines DO NOT LIKE if you skip a segment.
Do a nice free layover. This site may help you to find it: cleverlayover.com or airwander.com. I personally like the free stay-overs in Istanbul (Turkey) and Addis Ababa (Ethiopia). Hotel, bus and food is paid by the airline. Air Portugal supposedly also has some nice deals.
Change the language If you are booking directly from the airline, I have found insane savings in switching from English to the Spanish booking interface. Domestic flights can be easily 80% less. Don’t pay the gringo tax!
Fuel Dump and Error rates have too main causes:
1. Fuel-Dump Because the fuel surcharge component was added after commercial airline reservation systems were created, it left the possibility of glitches occurring. The Fuel Surcharge is a major part of the ticket price. The Fuel Surcharge of the long-haul flights may be dumped by a computer error. Many flight enthusiasts undergo a practice known as “Fuel Dumping“. This is when they intentionally pair specific airlines together on the same ticket in the hope that the fuel surcharge is dumped. While fuel dumps are still possible, it is mainly a thing of the past. They are rare!
2. Human error. When on the subject of mistake fares, the famous United Airlines First Class error fare comes to mind. This error fare was covered by numerous media outlets around the world for the sheer disbelief that tickets typically priced at $4000 were being sold for only $79.
This websites help you find fuel dumps and error fares. jacksflightclub.com and secretflying.com
What airline? No website has all flights. It can be difficult buying tickets from exotic airports, lets say Tabatinga Brazil or Altay China. One way to look into flights is to find out, what airlines fly from this airport. Try flightconnections.com If flight-connections does not have it, try googling the Wikipedia entry of the airport. Normally the wiki site has a list of airlines serving this destination.
Buying from an aggregator vs. buying directly from the Airline
This is a major decision. Many flight aggregators offer cheaper tickers than the airline but you may check both. If you use always the same booking website, booking can be convenient. I don’t think many airlines realize how bad their booking interface is. The big disadvantage in buying from a flight aggregator website: if you want to change the flight. If you know already that you may have to change the departure date, always buy directly from the airline. And make sure the flight can be changed.