Probably the biggest excuse not to travel is a price. Yet, lucky you, because in past years airline industry is booming, increasing numbers of passengers are transported annually. What does it mean to you? That the prices are dropping. Imagine planes in the 1970s designed to transport only 10 passengers. These times are gone. Nowadays planes could transport 200 or even 800 travelers all at once. Increasing number of airlines compete mainly by decreasing prices, not by improving service. I still remember my first flight which was in 2005 flying return from Lithuania to Sicily, that cost was astronomical (luckily it was funded by EU) but included great meals. Today most of us fly budget airlines, meal are not included, even the opposite, as they are extremely expensive onboard. In 2017 I have booked an 11 hours non-stop flight, where meals aren’t provided. Next generations probably won’t even know the feeling of long flight being fed for hours. This great luxury advantage of flying is on the way to be gone, same assistants serving meals disappeared from coaches in the most countries (but if you want to experience this, visit Turkey, Argentina, Algeria)

In short, these airlines companies just care to cut costs. Yet as a frequent and thrifty customer, I chose flights just primary based on the price and probably you too, that’s why you are reading this article.
Airlines know how to make money always changing the price of tickets. Fixed price flight ticket is rare (and very expensive) these days. Prices always vary depending on hidden formulas. Some variables are known, for example, the sooner the departure, the more expensive ticket is. Also, prices increase during biggest human migration period for example Christmas. Following closely airline ticket prices, one could notice patterns. But, no need to worry and get a degree in air ticket sale engine, because, software engineers are creating innovative ways to find cheapest tickets available (yeah, software engineers are great people for saving you loads of money by implementing these tools!)

Cut chit-chatting and let’s begin with actual tips.

1st tool to use

The first package of tools I would like to call “inspirational” because they would spin your mind to think out-of-the-box with your travel destinations and cheap prices. The websites are blog-looking, therefore posts are human readable, yet infrequent. Also, they focus on popular tourist destinations.

My personal favorite is www.travelfree.info, as it includes not just flights, but deals on cruises, buses, car rentals and hotels. Daily the blog posts around ten deals.

Plenty of similar blogs available depending on your home location, yet nerdy computer programmers implemented a site to scan deals from all holiday blogs and put on a single page, which is called flightor.com. It displays several hundred deals around the world.

These websites are not designed to track every single city, and you could easily find same deals using another group of tools, which would involve more effort but will bring flexibility.

2nd tool to use

My favorites are www.google.com/flights and www.skyscanner.net. On most flights within Europe, I use google flights, which lets me choose five departure airports around me and another five destinations. I like flexible departure dates there which scan for prices on similarish dates. It is comparable fast as well! Yet I note that flights.google.com does not include lesser known airlines and underperforms for intercontinental searches, therefore for flights outside Europe, I choose skyscanner.net. Not only the prices might be a bit better, but it has feature “anywhere”, where you can see prices to countries from your home airport or land. You might be surprised by prices which you see there! Or sometimes I choose just my destination and the website shows cheapest tickets in a whole year! It is not necessarily up-to-date information nor all dates are explored because to get this information, the engine caches previous searches (in case you are a fellow developer and wonder how websites might perform so many queries so fast).

So this is it! Happy searching! Remember, travelling is cheeeap!