Booking flights online sucks. Seriously.

It used to take me anywhere between 2-3 hours to find a cheap and accommodating flight that fitted my travel plans.

After many years of international travel, I have finally found the EASY, FAST and EFFECTIVE way to find cheap flights that suit my travel needs.

Let me show you how to save time, money and energy when you book flights online.

Incognito or InPrivate Browsing Feature

As soon as you enter your flight details into the flight website, your data is being processed and saved. This process is called “tracking cookies”.

These website are alerted that you’re browsing and comparing a few flight booking sites. The websites now know that you are searching to book cheap flights and they now stored your travel dates and which cities you are selecting. They will now JACK UP the flight prices.

Now when you check again for those really cheap flights you saw 10 minutes ago, well now, they are NO LONGER available.

You can see the same flights are ready for purchase, but the PRICES HAVE INCREASED.

Don’t worry, just get into a habit of hiding your flight searches online.

Search For Flights in Incognito Mode

Use the “incognito” or “InPrivate” browsing options available in your internet browser.

Not only does this feature hide all your browsing history and passwords, it also resets your cookies every time you open another private browsing window.

Check out how you do it below:

For Internet Explorer or Google Chrome, press “Tools/Controls” in the top right hand corner and select “Safety -> InPrivate Browsing” and for Google Chrome, click the “three dots symbol” in the top right hand corner and select “New Incognito Window”.

All other internet browsers have this feature available.

When you’re using the incognito mode or InPrivate browsing, your flight searches or any other searches are kept hidden.

Now you can start searching for those cheap online flights.

The Best Online Flight Websites

There are a number of different flight search sites out there. From my personal experience, I have had great success for cheap flights as well as fast and easy bookings with the following flight search engines:

Skyscanner

Kiwi.com

Expedia

These flight search engines will scan across the entire range of flights available online and come up with the cheapest options.

Cheapest Days For Flight Bookings

There is an option to choose a “monthly search tool” in Skyscanner.

This is a great tool because it shows which days are the cheapest for booking flights that month (top left corner you have the option to select ‘Show Whole Month’).

You can also select the “cheapest month” as the option.

Flights over the weekend that fall on Friday until Sunday are the most expensive, while weekdays are the cheapest.

Cheap Budget Airlines

Budget airlines are cheap, really cheap.  

You will not get served any entertainment or food on board but you can always take your own music or a laptop and bring a few snacks.

PLEASE NOTE: Some flight search engines do not include budget airlines, so it can be useful to check their sites yourself. There are a few things to consider before booking cheap flights with budget airlines:

–    Many budget airlines use smaller airports that are further away from the city, so it will cost you extra in taxi or public transport fares.

–    Often the cheap online fare does not include the luggage cost as they expect most people to have carry-on items only. It’s cheaper to pre purchase extra luggage online if you are carrying more than 7 KGs with you. Paying at the airport will cost more per luggage.

Cheapest Airports

This is pretty simple. Premium airports such as Melbourne International Airport is more expensive than Avalon Airport. Most budget airlines will fly from Avalon Airport, but some also fly from Melbourne International Airport. Do your homework.

Travel in Low Season

If you want a cheaper holiday, travel during the low season. Low season is usually when Europe and North America is in summer months. Low seasons is great because you can avoid cities being flooded with tourists, unless you prefer that.  It’s easier to find cheap accommodation during the low season.

Use Flight & Hotel Discounts

There is a fierce competition out there between flight companies for your money.

Budget airlines want to compete with more expensive ones by offering cheaper deals. If you’d like to be notified when the special sale fares are available, just sign up for their newsletter or special offers.

I suggest you check out: AirAsia, Jetstar, Ryanair, Nok Air, Easyjet & Scoot.

You can also save a HUGE amount on travel accommodation and hotels when you fly around the world.

I use Booking.com to book hotels only. They have unbeatable prices.

I also use AIRBNB for cheap and easy accommodation. This is where people rent out their own apartments for hire.

Get a $55 AIRBNB credit from me for your first booking.  If you already have an AIRBNB account, you can just sign up with a different email address and claim your $55 credit.

Your friend,

Alex

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