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MoneySavingExpert.com » Travel & Transport » Cheap Flights: Get the cheapest flights, whenever & wherever you go

There are three very different types of cheap flight finding website. Use the wrong one for the job and it can cost you time and money. Yet know what you're doing and it's possible to bag the ultimate cheapest flight in just a few minutes.

Use the right site type TOP SITES: For specific dates & destinations TOP SITES: Long-haul & with hotels TOP SITES: Finding £1 budget flights any time Cut the cost even more Carbon offsetting your flight Discuss/Other Articles

There's an easier way to go

With flights, unlike package holidays, it's usually best to book early, as when flights get booked up, business folks will pay high prices to get a seat, so airlines can ramp up the prices. Whenever you need to travel, the internet is a powerhouse for super-speedily finding the cheapest flights, yet which site to use depends on your plans.

• Know when and where you want to go? Use a screenscraper
  
• Looking for long haul, or a flight & hotel break combined? Use a Flight Broker
  
• Want to find the ultra-cheap £1 budget flights? Use the FlightChecker

These sites are always the place to start, but if you've more time after that further cheap flight tricks may shave the price down further. Plus do remember it's possible to get totally free flights simply by signing up to some credit cards, without ever using them (see Credit Card Freebies).

Cheap Flight Sales

When airlines have over capacity, they often launch very short-lived flight sales. If that happens and they're genuine bargains, they'll be included in the free weekly MoneySaving e-mail.

It's Free, Ad Free and Spam Free

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Package holidays shouldn't be ignored

While the internet's great for flights or DIY city breaks (also see the Cheapest Hotel Prices article), it rarely wins for a couple of weeks away in the sun or snow, in a traditional holiday destination. Then package holidays, where everything's wrapped up in one, often come up trumps (read the Cheapest Package Holidays article) and have the advantage of additional consumer protection.

Cheap flights can mean sacrificing flexibility

Do be aware the cheapest flights tend to have strict terms and conditions, with limited changeability, and it's tough to get refunds. Plus there's the environmental impact too. If you save money you may want to spend a little on carbon offsetting your flight.

Screenscrapers are a form of price comparison site employing clever technology to super-shop-around for you. Enter your trip details and they zip them to scores of normal airlines, budget airlines and flight-broker websites and then report back the cheapest. In other words they're search-and-report sites that 'scrape' the data off other sites' screens to get you the prices.

The Top Screenscrapers

Screenscrapers don’t all search the same sites, so always use at least two. My top picks are: Kayak for power, speed and ease. Kayak's* range of options, accuracy and ease of use are unbeatable. Whilst technically it's a meta search engine, not a screenscraper, the results are similar. Enter your travel details, and it searches all the eligible flights. Yet it's after this it shows its strength. Once you have the results use its tool bar to filter out the right trip for you. It also has the benefit of allowing multi-destination searches; so if you want to, you can fly from Manchester to LA, drive to Las Vegas and fly back from there. Travelsupermarket for range. While Kayak only searches main airlines, Travelsupermarket* includes many budget airlines and flight brokers too giving it the greatest range. It's easy to use, if not quite as polished as Kayak. The more screenscrapers used the better; if possible have them all searching in multiple windows: Skyscanner is multi-optioned and especially good for budget flights, plus there's also Sidestep, Foundem (which is fast), Kelkoo*, Momondo, Mobissimo and Openjet. For long haul especially, it's also worth checking the Flightbrokers below, most importantly Expedia* and Travelocity, which screenscrapers commonly miss.

How screenscrapers make their money

Screenscrapers make money from lead fees, meaning if you go to a flight website from them they're usually paid a small fee. This isn't really a problem, except occasionally they will try and push unmerited 'sponsored' links, so do keep an eye out for this.

All the top cheap flight sales go in the weekly MoneySaving e-mail

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Flightbrokers are companies which list many airlines' flights and have their own direct commercial relationships with them. As such they usually have their own special offer prices. Yet as many of the screenscrapers automatically search flightbrokers, they're more of a secondary website to visit. The one exception to this is that for some less-travelled long haul destinations screenscrapers can tend to under perform.

Flightbrokers' other advantage is many also offer cheap hotels, for which if you book with a flight, you may get an additional discount. Though do also see the Cheapest Hotel Prices article for more.

The Top FlightBrokers

As flightbrokers have different commercial relationships, it's important to try as many as possible, in case you hit lucky and one has a special deal to your destination. The two to try first: Expedia. For range, hotels, multi-destinations and special offers. Expedia* is the flightbroker big brother; its strengths are allowing multi-destination flight searches and many special offers, plus book your hotel and flight together and there's often an extra discount. One nifty extra trick is if Expedia is cheapest, check out the near identical site Greenbee it runs for John Lewis; the prices there differ slightly and are thus sometimes cheaper. Opodo. For standard airlines' flights. Opodo* is owned by nine large European airlines, including BA and Air France, and as such for standard flights with main airlines, tends to undercut everyone else by a smidgeon. Plus it also allows multi-destination searches. The best of the rest If possible do check the others: Travelocity is often excluded by screenscrapers and has some strong exclusive special offers, Ebookers*, which is similar to Expedia, Lastminute.com* which offers extra discounts if flights and hotels are booked together and Netflights* for long haul.

There's common marketing spiel in the budget airline industry of sales like 'a million seats for £1', yet try to book and suddenly they're nowhere to be found. The FlightChecker is a tool I had designed to beat this. If you're flexible, it'll tell you when to go to get the ultra-cheap flights. Currently it searches thirteen budget airlines including Easyjet and Ryanair.

Simply enter a range of travel dates (e.g. August to October), a destination (e.g. Venice, or select 'I'll Go Anywhere!') and the maximum price you're willing to pay including taxes and charges (e.g. £20) and it'll find all the flights that fit the criteria; you can also choose your trip length. This means you can decide your holiday date based on the cheapest price (and then read the Cheap Hotels & Hostels article for cheap accommodation). In 'I'll Go Anywhere' search results you can quickly find matching flight routes by clicking the result boxes; they'll drop down to give you full info, and all corresponding flights in the list, inbound or outbound, will be highlighted.

How does it work?

The technology behind the flightchecker is slightly different to the other sites; rather than 'scraping' the data for each query, it uses spidering technology to constantly trawl the sites every few hours and build a massive database of over 300,000 current flights. This is the only way to do it speedily, the only minor negative is very occasionally a few of the flights listed have sold out once you check them.

The best budget flight sales go in the weekly MoneySaving e-mail

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If the web hasn't delivered for you, or you're willing to spend time to further cut the cost, there are a raft of other tricks to drive the cost down further.

The sites above focus on scheduled flights; those operated on a regular timetable by main and budget airlines. The alternative is charter flights, which are specially arranged, usually by package tour operator owned airlines, to carry customers to their destinations. Occasionally these have spare capacity, and offer very cheap flight-only deals. The website Flights Direct has a charter airline search; though avid bargain hunters should also call up travel agents to check it out too.

Book a package but don't stay

If there aren't charter flights, you may want to consider booking a package holiday and not using the hotel. Package holidays in destinations like Ghana, Florida or Sri Lanka can be cheaper than just getting a standalone cheapest scheduled flight, so just book it but if you've alternative accommodation, don't stay in their hotel. See the Cheap Package Holiday article.

The UK is a melting pot of different immigrant and ethnic communities, and this can be used to great advantage for a cheap flight booking as often niche travel agents will specialise in finding deals to those communities' linked countries.

For example Shepherds Bush in London has some Caribbean specialist tour agents, or buy the Jewish Chronicle which has companies advertising cheap Israel flights.

Know of specialist travel agents? Add your finds/read others

If you're flying a good number of months away it's worth signing up to the e-mail lists of all the relevant airlines. Often they e-mail out details of short term sales so if you've definite plans, you can be ready to pounce at the right moment (and of course this site's weekly e-mail includes the best of them).

Before you do that always use a screenscraper to benchmark what a realistic price should be. Especially good for sales are the newsletters of British Airways*, Opodo*, American Airlines, Air France* and KLM*.

Once you know what the flight is there are a few sites which should help you improve it. Use Seatguru to check out which airlines have the most room and best in-flight details, Airlinequality is similar but also includes airports, reviews and rankings, Flightstats details punctuality on current flights and other data, while Delaycast predicts delays for flights within and to the US. Plus, if you'd prefer to know what you'll be eating on the flight before you board Airlinemeals has photos and reviews.

It's difficult for non-web flight companies to beat the web agencies, but there's no harm in calling a few travel agents as a final check. Alternatively the forum's Beat My Quote thread allows you to post your best quote so far and see if any travel agents who frequent the Travel Board can beat it. Though do beware it usually takes a couple of days and you don't want to lose the cheapest price available in the mean time.

It's my hope this article allows people to fly more cheaply, but not necessarily more often. If you have saved serious cash, then it's worth considering carbon offsetting your flight.

Go to a carbon offsetting site, enter your flight details and it'll calculate an appropriate payment towards a conservation project. These usually involve planting trees, which absorb more CO2 than they produce. Other projects include solar lighting in schools and financing renewable energy sources in under-developed countries. The hope is in the long run this balances out the damage flying causes.

In truth, it's unlikely to fully do that, but it is a step in the right direction. A full comparison of these sites for both cost and effectiveness is planned soon, but in the meantime here's a selection: Climatecare, Co2balance, Carbonneutral, Carbon-clear and Growaforest.

Do it yourself

These companies are not charities and obviously aim to make a profit. If you would rather know that 100% of your money is being used effectively you could plant trees yourself or give some time to a local project conserving woodland in your area.