Most people believe that flights with layovers are less expensive than direct flights, although this is not true of all flights. It usually applies to long-haul flights, when choosing ones with layovers or even stopovers can lower costs by almost half.
Here are some tips for reducing flying costs while making reservations.
AIRWANDER
The Airwander website is a fantastic choice if you’re considering multi-city travel or wish to add unexpected locations at no cost or very little expense. It will be relaunched in the fall of this year following the Covid acquisition. When you enter your departure and destination points, as well as the number of days you have available for stopovers, Airwander suggests possible stopovers along with an estimated cost for your journey. This implies that you can travel to new cities for little to no additional cost in terms of flights.
SKIPLAGGED
The air fare search engine Skiplagged employs a contentious but quite legal tactic to significantly reduce your flight costs. The website can help you locate routes from point A to point C with a layover or stopover at your destination, point B, rather than booking a ticket from point A to point B. As a result, you arrive at destination B without having finished the last part of your journey. Your costs have been reduced because, especially for long-haul flights, flights with layovers are significantly less expensive than direct flights. There are certain drawbacks to this choice, though. You can only purchase one-way tickets and are not permitted to travel with checked luggage because it will be delivered to the final destination.
Airlines versus Aggregators
While search engines and aggregator websites are the greatest options for booking numerous airline flights, airline websites occasionally have greater deals to offer. This is so that you can avoid paying more for your flight, especially if you are travelling with a family or group. The former typically display inflated fares and also charge a transaction or service fee. However, you can reduce your prices by taking advantage of discounts, special deals, flash sales, frequent flyer programme discounts, and co-branded credit cards with certain airlines. If you still prefer using an aggregator website, choose one that has the most flight possibilities, the best prices, the most filtering options, and the least amount of service fees.
MEDIA & FARE ALERTS ON SOCIAL MEDIA
Perhaps the simplest approach to lower your flight cost is to choose alerts. Subscribe to fare notifications on airline or travel booking websites to learn about price drops or other opportunities to buy cheaper tickets. To save money on your travel, you can also follow airline profiles on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter to take advantage of flash deals, discounts, and early bird specials.
INCOGNITO, GO
This is one of the best-kept secrets for getting a cheaper airfare. Most aggregator or travel websites use cookies and IP addresses to track your search habits. Therefore, if you look for a flight’s pricing on a specific website and come back later, the price is probably greater. You can utilise the incognito mode or remove all cookies after using them to prevent this. To surf incognito in Google Chrome, click the three dots in the upper-right corner of the screen and select “New Incognito Window” from the drop-down menu.
