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How to Find Cheap Flights to Anywhere in the World

Lauren West
Types of air travel classes

 

Our travel pursuits have taught us lessons often inquired about by our followers on Tumblr and Instagram. And the most common question? How we’re able to travel hack our way to super cheap flights. Well you asked and we’re answering—here are our tips and tricks to for how to find cheap flights to anywhere!

We’re diving into everything you need to know when searching for cheap flights, from the best sites for cheapest flights, to mastering a flexible dates flight search, and the impact of incognito mode on flight tickets.

Digging for a dirt cheap flight is always a tedious task, and it’s incredibly easy to get overwhelmed quickly during any search for cheap flights anywhere. Tricky airlines raise the prices at every refresh of the browser (ergo, incognito mode for flight tickets—more detail on this later), and the sheer immensity of sites claiming to be the best cheap flight search engines are near impossible to sift through. The first step to learning how to find cheap flights to anywhere is to be one step ahead of them.

So seriously, stop it with the searching for cheap flights madness. Quit wasting your time and dolla bills, and implement a travel hack or two from this list into your next cheap flight search!

1. Narrow your list of cheap flight search engines

For any deliberate cheap flight search, I always (literally 100% always) begin my search with Skyscanner.

I’ve been using Skyscanner for cheap tickets since my flatmate in Prague introduced it to me in 2012 during our quest to find the cheapest route to Morocco. It’s been my main cheap flight-finding squeeze ever since.

From our jackpot $299 ticket win from LA to Peru, to our $340 cheap flight find from South Korea to Sri Lanka, and, most recently, our cheap flight tickets to Vietnam, Skyscanner delivers cheap tickets.

And why do I think Skyscanner is the best website to find cheap flights?

The ultimate customizable flight search tool for the smart traveler and savvy cheap flight-finder, Skyscanner allows you to be as specific or vague as you need to be.

If you want to know how to search for cheap flights to anywhere, without even having a specified destination—look to Skyscanner for your search engine for cheap flights.

In seconds, you can have an overview of hundreds of flights from your designated starting point, conveniently organized by price. And here’s the best part—you don’t even have to know where (or when) you want to go.

 

2. Base your destination on the current flight market

Want to know how to search for the cheapest flights? Basically, set your destination based on what’s currently cheapest.

Using Skyscanner, you can generate a list of all the super cheap flights based out of your nearest airport.

This functionality of Skyscanner is what makes it, in our opinion, the cheapest flight search engine, as you can literally see the cheapest flights throughout the world from your home airport.

 

Let’s begin with an example to demonstrate how to find cheap flights to anywhere using Skyscanner.

 

Take a look at these flights out of LAX. Using Skyscanner, I can search for cheap flights anywhere out of my departure city to everywhere in the world. I can then choose my destination from this list of super cheap flights. Guatemala, I see you!

(Of course, that’s often easier said than done.)

For example: It’s June. It’s your sister’s wedding in a month. You have to be at place X on day Y and have to be back for work by Z.

Not the most flexible scenario.

However, not every travel situation is quite this restricted.

Since I’m currently teaching English abroad at a private school in South Korea, my vacation time is fairly limited. I get 1 week off in the summer and 1 week off in the winter, with all dates predetermined and outside of my control. So no, my dates aren’t flexible. But, my destination is.

 

Using Skyscanner, I can access a list of the cheapest flights out of South Korea to anywhere in the world for the dates of my vacation. I’ll typically set a personal maximum I’m willing to pay per person for a flight (usually $400), and pick the most enticing destination that comes in under that price.

 

Also—for daily wanderlust-stirring updates of cheap flights from all over the world, make sure to follow Television of Nomads on Facebook. And if your city isn’t being included in our daily updates, PLEASE CONTACT US AND LET US KNOW! We’d be happy to help you in your flight search!

 

Looking for cheap flight travel hacks to score a bargain trip from the U.S. to Europe?

Check out How to Get Cheaper Flights Through Norwegian Air Shuttle!

3. Check for flights on dates around your selected dates

To truly master the art of how to find cheap flights to anywhere, you’re going to have to get flexible. Searching for cheap flights using flexible dates, that is.

The next cheap flight search skill we’ll dive into is how to search for the cheapest flights using flexible dates.

As you can see in the screencap below, prices can vary DRAMATICALLY from one day to the next. Sometimes by hundreds and hundreds of dollars.

So, when conducting a cheap flight search, one travel hack is to always refer to Skyscanner’s calendar to see the price variations from day to day.

As you can see, the more flexible your dates are, the better deals you can find.

Let’s go into an example to learn how to search for cheap flights with flexible dates.

 

 

Let’s look at this calendar of flights from Los Angeles to Peru on Skyscanner. As you can see, changing the departure date from the 12th to the 11th cuts MORE THAN HALF off the cost of the departure ticket. And look at the return flight price for the 20th! No thank you!

By referring to Skyscanner’s calendar, you can search for the cheapest flights by date. Using this info, you can tweak your dates to accommodate the current flight market and score deals like this remarkable $239 flight from LA to Lima! Searching for cheap flights with flexible dates is how we scored our super cheap flights to Peru and managed our astounding near-empty Machu Picchu experience!

 

4. Search for airports/cities around your destination

As we’ve learned already, Skyscanner allows you to search for cheap flights to anywhere. We’ve discussed how you can use this functionality when searching for cheap flights to decide which destination to plan your trip to.

And to make sure you’re getting the best deal possible, you can also use this functionality to research if there are any super cheap flights to airports near your desired departure or arrival cities.

Just like flexibility in dates can save you a few hundred bucks here and there, so can flexibility in airports. We live on Jeju Island in South Korea, but I almost never search for flights directly out of Jeju. Rather, I search for flights out of South Korea in general, and choose the most cost-effective city, which usually turns out to be Seoul. However, other major cities in South Korea are also worth a look, such as Busan and Daegu.

For our flight to Beijing for Chinese New Year, we ended up flying first to Daegu, as we were able to score the cheapest flight to Beijing from that city. Then, we booked separate flights out of Daegu to Beijing. This travel hack saved us hundreds of dollars!

Look at the screen cap below to see the differences in flight prices based on departure cities.

 

 

Time for another example for how to search cheap flights to anywhere using flexible cities.

Let’s say I want to take a trip to Japan.

Let’s look at the flights out of South Korea to my arrival city of choice above—in this case, Fukuoka. Jeju’s 4th on the list, while Daegu actually ranks as the cheapest departure city out of South Korea to get to my destination of choice, in this current flight market. Knowing this information, I can now quickly look into flights from Jeju to Daegu, and flights from Jeju to Seoul, add the cost of these to the cost of the flights to Fukuoka, and choose whichever is cheapest and best for my schedule!

Let’s take another example.

Let’s say I want to fly to Ireland but flights are too expensive to fly directly. Another option for me is to check on countries with regular flights to Ireland, and grab the cheapest flight to one of those locations instead. Then, I can grab a discounted European airline flight to my final destination of Ireland. Using this method, I have been able to save money on flights, OR squeeze in an additional location at the same price, or slightly more. Either way, I’ve been able to add onto the value of my trip!

 

Chefchaouen, Morocco

 

This logic applies anywhere! While planning my first backpacking trip to Morocco, we used Skyscanner to maneuver a string of ridiculously cheap flights from Prague to Milan, then to Barcelona, and onward down through Spain until we took a ferry off the coast to Morocco. With this method we were able to save HUNDREDS of dollars, and afford a trip that otherwise we wouldn’t have been able to take! While this may be on the more extreme side, you could still benefit from the logic.

If flying out of the states, check the international flights out of major airports near you, and then separately look for the cheapest flights that can get you there. You’re almost guaranteed to save some money this way!

 

5. Don’t be scared of a long layover

No, not everyone has the time or patience for a long layover. But, if your number one goal is saving money, this is definitely one travel hack you’ll want to consider when conducting your cheap flight search. As we’re currently teaching English abroad in Korea, we have limited vacation. This restricts the amount of times we can really take advantage of the cheap flights with long layovers, but we’ve certainly been there. From 8 hours in Colombia, to 12 hours in London, or even longer in Taiwan, long layovers can actually be a mini-trip in disguise!

 

I took advantage of my 12-hour layover in London to take a brief foray among some of the big sites, such as the Tower Bridge!

 

If you opt for a long layover, make sure to research the logistics of leaving the airport and having a little day- or partial day-trip in your layover city. Make sure to find out if you’ll need a visa to exit the airport, how long it will take to go from the airport to the centralized city area (and how much it will cost), as well as when these routes of transportation stop running! And don’t forget a fantastic travel day bag!

 

And if a long layover is simply out of the question, use Skyscanner‘s customizable toolbar to only show results under a certain travel time length. This will help weed out those long-layover flights cluttering up your search and save you valuable time in your cheap flight search!

 

6. Or, make your own layover

Sometimes, you may find it cheaper to separately book each leg of your trip on your own than booking  an identical travel route as one package with built-in layovers.

For example, we’re currently considering flights to the Philippines for our winter vacation in December. It’s actually much cheaper to book flights separately from Jeju to Seoul, from Seoul to Manila, and then from Manila to El Nido (our final destination), than it would be if we booked a package from Jeju to El Nido, EVEN THOUGH the package would take us through the same exact route (layover in Seoul and Manila)!

If flying to Europe from the states, you could apply this same logic. First, search for flights from your desired departure point and your desired arrival point, and make note of any layover cities that pop up. Let’s say you’re flying from Los Angeles, California, and intend to end up in Prague, Czech Republic. You’re probably not going to find any direct flights between these two cities, but you will find flights with layovers in London or Paris. To try to cut flight costs, you might want to look for a flight from Los Angeles to London or Paris (or even look through Skyscanner’s Deals to find a cheaper entry point into Europe), and then look at a discount European airline flight from London or Paris to your final destination, Prague.

Most of the time you can save hundreds of dollars by splitting up your flights in this way, even though you’re traveling the same exact travel legs. Just make sure to check the luggage requirements of these discount airlines, and if you’ll need to purchase extra luggage space, make sure to buy it online ahead of time to save money. For pro tips on what you should actually bring on the plane with you, check out this carry on essentials packing list as well as our own essential carry on packing list.

One major benefit of splitting up your flights like this (besides saving on cost) is a greater control over your itinerary. You can scour all the available flights and actively select how long you want to stay in a place based on what’s available, as opposed to flights being randomly grouped together for you.

This kind of travel hack also requires more attention to make sure the travel legs you book are close enough together in time, without being TOO close so that you miss your connecting flight. Make sure you account extra time for customs, baggage claim, flight delays, and maybe even an airport transfer!

 

7. Conduct your cheap flight search like a spy

Take your cheap flight search to the next level with some Carmen Sandiego-style stealth.

If you’re looking to find cheap flights to anywhere—you’re gonna have to outsmart airline websites by learning how to use incognito mode for flight tickets searches.

Cheap flight search engines and airlines track your browser cookies, and can use them to identify the recent searches you’ve made. With this information, these sites actually raise the prices gradually to fuel up some urgency in you to hurry up and input that credit card info! So don’t get tricked!

Fight this by clearing your browser history and cookies regularly, or take it a step further and complete your cheap flight search using Google Chrome’s incognito mode.

Here’s a speedy travel hack: with the Google Chrome browser open, press and hold Ctrl+Shift+N to pop open the incognito browser effortlessly. BOOM, we got ourselves a cheap flight search master!

 

8. Book your ticket at the best time

Flight prices bounce around like nobody’s business. So when’s the best time to actually book your ticket?

Despite travel hack claims to the contrary, there really isn’t a static magic number. Airlines are different, flights are different, timelines are different, and most of these fluctuate independent of everything else.

Still, there are guidelines that can help you decide when is USUALLY the best time to book your ticket. So when is it?

54 days before your intended flight.

In 2015, this was, on average, the best time to buy flights, according to Cheapair. So, if nothing else, you can look at flights 54 days before (and the dates hovering around this magic number) to potentially find the greatest deals.

 

Otherwise, aim for the “Prime Booking Window.”

And when is this prime booking window? 21-112 days before your intended flight. Yes, that’s a pretty wide open window, but it’s better than nothing. During this time period, you should definitely check for fares often, using your browser’s incognito mode, and set some Skyscanner fare alerts to notify you of any price drops. When you get a price that you can feel good about, you might want to go ahead and book it!

For more tips on when to book your flight for Americans, check out Best Time to Book Flights from the United States.

 

9. Plan ahead: subscribe to airline/airfare-watch email lists

Skyscanner is our golden tool for deliberate flight searches, but how about our recommended resources for receiving travel alerts? For this, Skyscanner alerts are a great way to stay in touch with price changes, as well as airfare tracking with Yapta.

 

PRO TIP: You might want to have a look at other deal-finding sites, such as Priceline. Here are some tricks for finding the best Priceline Express Deals!

 

For random deals sent to my email, resources like TripAdvisor airfare alerts, TravelZoo Top 20 Deals, and airfarewatchdog are also fantastic sites for staying up to date with the best deals.

And don’t forget to follow Television of Nomads on Facebook and Twitter! As Skyscanner Elite ambassadors, we have access to flight deals that you certainly won’t want to miss!

 

Beyond the Cheap Flight Search

Now that you’ve mastered how to find cheap flights to anywhere in the world, be sure to refer to our other travel guides!

We hope you’ve appreciated our travel hack tips for scoring the cheapest flights yourself. But what about once you actually get on the plane? Before you board, make sure to check out our guide to TSA carry-on restrictions as well as our carry-on packing list.

 

Are cheap flights your thing? You might also appreciate how to get a free plane ticket!

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Can you think of another travel hack for improving your cheap flight search?

Let us know in a comment below!

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