How to book the cheapest flight possible to anywhere?

People are always asking me, where the hell do I find this ridiculous cheap plane tickets? It's not that hard and I find it very easy, especially since it’s my little passion and challenge to always find the cheapest flight. So, I decided to share with you all my knowledge I learned by searching for cheap fares.

• Be flexible with your dates.
  If you are a student and you are looking for a short trip, then try to go in the low season of the city/country. In Europe, the low tourist season is in January and February and you get exclusive offers every year for this period for 20€ round trip tickets. Once I found round trip from Venice to Paris for 7,5€! So it’s definitely worth planning to go on vacation in a low season. Avoid dates around Christmas, New Year and basically every major holiday and remember that all Europe has high tourist season in July and August. Try to book a flight in the middle of the week and not on the weekend. Also, don't forget that flights in the early morning or in late evening are always cheaper!

• Be flexible with your destination!
  If you can’t be flexible with your dates of vacation, because of your work or some other reason, then try to be flexible with destination! The more you can be flexible about a trip, the more chance you have to hit the jackpot with a cheap flight.
  When you have no clue where you want to go, I suggest you try with explore option most airline search engines have. I use skyscanner.ie and I like to use explore our map option. Then you just choose airport where you want to fly from and month of travelling and boom! There you have it! The entire world map and prices of flights to get there! :)

• Direct flight is not always a promising idea!
  Sometimes it is cheaper to take a flight to London with a budget airline and from there fly direct flight to New York for example. So, when you are looking for cheap flights overseas don't focus only on the airport near you. Focus first on the flights by low budget airlines to the major airports around and from there then search for overseas flights.
  By booking various airlines and different exclusive offers, you can save a lot of money, but the problem can show up when the flight is late, and your next flight is not really connecting flight. So, this option is not for everyone especially for those who are not travelling a lot and are not used to deal with this kind of stuff. Also, this option takes more work and more time to find the right flights and different routes. But if you are like me and you don't mind taking more time to save more money, try it! In the end, you will have more money to spend it on your destination. ;)

• Use different search engines!
  When you find a flight try also to find it on a different search website because prices can vary from times to times. The reason for that is that many search sites don't list all the low-budget airlines because those airlines don't want to pay a booking commission, or their sites are not in English or some other reasons. That is why I always check the same flight on the different search engines and prices often vary for the exact same flight! But remember that the lowest price doesn't mean that this is the best pick, sometimes search engines transfer you to some shady booking agencies and you don't want to have troubles later (TIP: Google booking agencies reviews!).
  There are no perfect or safest search engines! Even the best can link you to shady looking sites!
  Anyway, these are MY favourite search engines for flights:

  • Skyscanner
  • Google flights
  • Momondo
  • ITA Matrix
  • Kayak

• Sign up for cheap fare alerts
  After you search on multiple flight search engines and the price doesn’t fit your budget, I recommend you use website alerts. All you need to do is to put in the details about your destination, dates and then website alerts you via email when the price drops. You can use this option in Skyscanner or any other search engine I listed under point 4.
  You should also sign up and check regularly some airfare websites that post exclusive prices every day and error fares! They usually list the best possible fares, but you need to react quickly because flights are in most cases error fare and that means that the price won’t stay for long like this.
  So, if you are from Slovenia or you understand Slovenian language I recommend you check out Facebook page Po Svetu! They post exclusive deals every day!
  But if you don’t understand Slovenian language like most of the people, then I advise you to check out: holidaypirates.com, theflightdeal.com, secretflying.com and airfarewatchdog.com

• Sign up for airline newsletters
  I know it is annoying when you have a mailbox full of spam, but it happened to me that I got one of the best deals from the newsletter of an airline. I advise you to sign up for the ones that you are using more regularly. I signed up for Ryanair’s newsletter and I usually get deals on mail before they publish it on the website. And you can always use Gmail filter to put promotional emails in the special folder and you check it out later when you have time.

• Use your student status or your age
  If you are still a student like me, then I advise you to always check for student discounts. If you are not skilful when it comes to search for a cheap flight you can also get a great student deals for cheap flight via STA travel agency. They have exclusive deals made just for students!

BONUS TIPS!

1. Have your money ready on your bank account!
   My advice when you are sure that you are going to buy a flight ticket, put money on your bank account and when you find the right ticket just buy it! Don’t wait for another 5 days and transfer money to account and wait for bank to process it. It can happen that the next day ticket at this price will be already gone! Trust me, I had this problem in the past. For example, what if you find the perfect fare on Friday and then you need to wait until Monday to buy it because you don’t have your money on account? That’s why when you know you are ready to buy a ticket, first sort out the money, put it on your account and start to search for the flight seriously.
2. Pay attention to payment method!
   Sometimes airlines don’t except usual payment methods like PayPal, Visa or Mastercard! If you don’t want to be disappointed at the end when you realise you can’t buy your perfect fare ticket, check out payment methods before you dig into search! And on the other hand, you can get some pretty cool discounts for paying with Diners card for example.
3. Check if your passport is valid for at least 6 months!
   BEFORE you even think about buying a ticket you need a passport that is valid for at least 6 months or ID if you are from European Union and you are travelling in EU countries.
4. When filling personal data use English alphabet!
   When you are filing info about passenger be careful to use English alphabet, that means that if you have in your name or surname Š, Č, Ž write it like S, C, Z, because you can have a lot of trouble on the airport in the country that doesn’t use these letters.

If you have any tips and trick for booking a cheap flight, feel free to comment below! I am curious how you find your best fare?